Who's Training Who?

As any cat owner will attest, you can’t train the critters. You just can’t. For one thing, cats are independent. They’re stubborn. Cats tolerate you, eat your food, and if you’re lucky — and they’re so inclined — a cat might just let you give it a scratch behind the ears if it happens upon your lap. But balancing balls on their noses? Dancing to music? Shimmying beneath parallel bars and doing handstands?

Maybe if you’re wearing body armor.

Yet that’s just what the cats of Yuri Kouklachev’s travelling Russian Cats Circus do. Kouklachev is tight-lipped about his technique. If pressed, he will only say, “I don’t train cats — they train me.” He washes the cats, gives them a lot of love and care, and then lets the cats do what they like to do. But as Ilya Berchenko, who helped promote and organize the event for the American-Russian Cultural Exchange, says, “I’ve seen what these cats can do.” And it’s not merely napping on a Queen Anne chair.

The circus is a big deal in Russia, where virtually every large city has a permanent troupe, but Kouklachev’s cat theater is unique. The show began as a clown act for the Moscow circus, starring Kouklachev and a lone cat. Russian circuses typically focus on larger animals such as horses, bears and tigers, but Kouklachev’s feline take on an old tradition has proved equally popular, taking him far beyond Russia’s borders. When Kouklachev’s show went to England, strict import laws prevented animals from entering the country, so Kouklachev was forced to collect street cats and train them in-country.

Russian native Mikhail Indenbom says he’s not sure every aspect of Kouklachev’s act will translate for American audiences. “I like the jokes,” Indenbom says, “but in my experience, Americans don’t get jokes.” Another cultural difference? According to Exchange co-founder Alex Kogan, American children are “more relaxed,” which forced Kouklachev to stop allowing kids on stage, because they tended to get too rowdy with the cats. You can’t expect these felines to perform under such conditions. You know what divas they can be.

The Russian Cats Circus will perform at Hamman Hall, Rice University (entrance no. 14, off Rice Boulevard) on Wednesday and Thursday, March 1 and 2, at 8 p.m. (An encore performance may be held Saturday, March 4.) For tickets, $25-$35, call Ticketmaster at (713)629-3700, or go to www.ticketmaster.com.