Apparently in Russia people have a different view of cats than we do here in the States. Obviously different cultures will view the same thing differently, but I'm not talking about Egyptian style diety worship. Russia may technically be Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but there has always been a thick thread of animism to their beliefs, to the point of inanimate objects are attributed human characteristics; the Russian compound noun for "speed bump" translates to "short police officer".
This probably leads to the thought process that cats are trainable, like dogs and elephants and bears, and can put on quite entertaining shows. If anyone reading this site has seen a short piece on Animal Planet about a Vegas kitty circus show, one might notice that the trainer is Russian, as I did, but not think too much about it.
If one would then search a little deeper into the cat circus phenomena, they might find this video, the Moscow Cat Theater. This video explains a little about the Russian love of cats, and their long tradiion of training cats to perform in front of a cheering crowd.
If you love cats or hate them, I implore you to check out these two videos.
Cute videos... while I don't hate cats, I'm not a crazy cat woman... but watching those cats was fun not that any cat I ever "owned" came close to being that talented.... heck my poodle isn't even close to being that talented
ReplyDelete