Ragdoll Cats

Anyone with a Ragdoll cat can tell you how hard it is to get them to do pretty much anything. However, don’t tell this to Yuri Kuklachev, proprietor of the famous Moscow Cat Theatre. Yuri was on CBS’s Early Show wearing a clown costume along with Marusa, a cat doing handstands on the palm of his hand. His act even features a Ragdoll cat.

One kitty rides a bike and another holds on for dear life to a bucking rocking horse as it rocks back and forth. Another cat walks the tightrope; first right side up and upside down, straddling the rope with its legs to hang on. For his next trick, a cat looks as though it were attending boot camp. Two assistants hold ropes horizontally, as the cat traverses the two poles. Then Yuri flipped him around and the cat hung from front legs, crawling back along the poles, two more times.

Yuri is a famous circus performer in Russia; however, for nearly 30 years his act has been solely about cats. He says he started the Cat Theater by chance. Just walking along the street and I found an abandoned kitten in a bush he stated. I began playing with him and I had an idea; to start performing with cats. No one else in the world was doing this. Yuri and his cats are currently performing their show in New York City.