For Love of Mother-Not by Alan Dean Foster (American, 1983)

Summary:
The story takes place in a planet named Moth, in there we get to know Mother Mastiff, an old woman that, without knowing why or how, gets to a slave auction in which she adopts a little boy named Flinx. Flinx turns out to be a total mistery since he can’t remember where he is from or if he has another family or anything. Mother Mastiff has a store in which she sells old things and things from other planets, one day while they were in it Flinx began to say that a man had stolen some rings, he had no proof, yet he was sure of it. After some threading from mother Mastiff and some other neighbors about calling the police and such, he confesses that he has eaten them and has no clue of how the kid knew if he hadn’t see him. Then Flinx confess to Mother Mastiff that he knew it because he could feel that the man felt guilty about the robbery. 
 Time later Flinx wakes up in the middle of the night because he felt hungry and is afraid, at first he thought it was something within him, but then discovers that those are the feelings of someone else, following them, he founds an animal which resembles a dragon a lot, since it can fly but is also like a cat. Flinx decides to keep it and names it Pip, turns out that it can also sense feelings, just as Flinx. 
 While growing up, Mother Mastiff allowed Flinx to have a lot of freedom as long as he returned home every night. One day, out of the blue mother Mastiff is captured. Flinx without hesitating goes after her with the help of Pip, since Pip can follow her thanks to her smell. 
 His trip takes him to a cafe on the outskirts of the city, they both see each other but also the kidnappers. There starts a small fight but the lights go out and everyone is confused. Once the lights are back on, Flinx finds our that Mother is no longer there, he is about to set out on a search once again but is interrupted by a girl named Lauren who decides to help him because the others had destroyed her place. Their persecution leads them to a lake where a ship takes flight and leaves Flinx and Lauren to deal with a gigantic fish. They barely make it and are able to get inside the ship. Meanwhile in the ship Mother Mastiff listens to her kidnappers that say that Flinx is an experiment, that that’s why he has no memories, that they belong to an organization named Meliorare society. Flinx and Lauren rescue Mother Mastiff. Mother Mastiff then decides not to say anything she heard to Flinx in order to protect him. Once at home, Pip is now kidnapped by the society and Flinx goes after him. The society sets the date in an old building and try to tell him the truth, however Pip does something and the whole place explodes. Flinx is found safe and sound along with Pip outside the building and no one can explain why. He returns home. Mother Mastiff is still doubtful about telling him the truth so when she finds our that he already knows something she decides to share what she knows.

Another summary:
Mother Mastiff is an old woman that has been working for the last years in the store she obtained by herself through her lifetime. She lives in a planet called "Moth," which is similar to planet Earth, since humanity was able to create the technology to travel to other solar systems and galaxies.
 Police officers used to give orphan children in adoption and Mother Mastiff did not have a husband nor children. Something told her to adopt one that seemed special, so she ended up paying the government a certain price to keep the child. Later on, Mastiff asks the kid for his name, but he only remembers to be called Flinx. The poor boy had a terrible past and does not know exactly what happened to him when he was younger. He was not aware he was part of an experiment conducted by a group of scientists called The Meliorare Society. 
 The mad scientists searched for human perfection as they raised several kids and conducted experiments on them. Some kids grew normally, others started to have problems in their development over time, but very few kids were able to show above average results, Flinx being one of them. But other kids were tortured by The Meliorare Society's mistakes, forcing them to constantly run away from the law. The Meliorare Society shows in a certain way the drawbacks of human evolution and the desire to become better in certain aspects when it involves having issues with moral rules, and this makes it hard to think of humanity progress as a bad thing or a good one.
 As Flinx grows up, Mother Mastiff realizes that the boy has the talent to ocasionally sense another people's feelings, and, later on, Flinx is able to sense also animals' emotions so he adopts a snake and names it Pip.
 During this time, the Meliorare Society gets information about Flinx's mental talent, so they kidnap Mother Mastiff in order to push further Flinx's development. When Flinx realizes that his mother is missing, he starts a journey with his pet, Pip, in order to rescue her.
 As the story goes on, the protagonist develops maturity and shows his incredible intelligence and skills, being a threat to The Meliorare Society which Chris and leading the last of them to an unevitable end. All of this shows that The Meliorare Society's methods actually worked to motivate Flinx's abilities, but only reacting to the immoral and inhuman method, showing dissappointment and dissaproval to the scientific and technological progress.

Another summary:
The story takes place in a planet called Moth. Here the law enforcers auction orphan children for adoption. Mother Mastiff finds herself adopting a small boy that responds to the name of Flinx. His past and origins are uncertain for both of them but over the years she becomes aware of certain odd things about him, specifically his odd ability to sense people's emotions. He also befriends a snake with which he creates a special connection and names it Pip.
 One day Flinx arrives home to find that Mother Mastiff has been kidnapped. He doesn’t know it at the moment, but an organization called the Meliolare Society is trying to get to him. These people have made a numerous amount of experiments on many people with the goal of achieving human perfection, Flix among them. They are aiming to get him to control his empathic telepathy and finish the work they started and up until then had seemed to have failed. Flinx goes through a whole ordeal across the wet planet he lives on to finally find Mother Mastiff. The building where she is kept collapses before the boy gets any kind of answers and they go back home. 
 A second incident, in which Pip goes missing, has him searching again. In this occasion he encounters another man but before he can give any answer, once again, things are interrupted, this time by the law enforcers. There, people seem to consider both Pip and Flinx a danger, but the boy and his snake manage to escape thanks to an explosion that blew them out of the building just in time. The boy and his pet go back home once more.

World view: The world portrayed in the story is an hypothetical society which seems to be worse than the one the author lives in.
Future projections: It’s a negative emotional reaction against technological (transcendental, evolutive) or social progress. As such, It shows the horrible consequences of utopia or at least portrays skepticism or disappointment in regard to scientific or technological miracles.
Ideology: Portrays the enforcement of justice in a positive manner and has faith in human capacity to build a better future.
Characters, plot and writing style: Black humor and satire are employed to expose, criticize or shame individuals or the society itself into improvement.
Classification: Dystopia