When you first see the cats walking down tightropes on cue, you think, they must be animatronic. They must be puppets.  You can’t train a cat to do anything on cue.  And yet, there they are, defying nature: Trained cats! But fear not, dog lovers—Popovich’s Comedy Pet Theater features trained dogs too, with a few other animals thrown in for good measure.

As you might guess from his name, Gregory Popovich is from Russia, where he learned his skills as a clown in the Moscow Circus. And those skills are impressive, ranging from juggling while balancing on a free-standing ladder or playing catch with a dog that’s sitting on a platform at the top of that pole that’s balancing on his forehead—which is just as spectacular as it sounds. But though Popovich’s clowning is marvelous (the New York Times once called him “the Baryshnikov of juggling”), what’s made his show so successful is his ability to create delightful scenes with his beloved animals.

When a tiny circus train drives on to the stage, cats, dogs, rats, and birds proceed to clamber in, including a dog dressed in an elephant costume!  The stage becomes a snowy streetcorner, where a cat perches atop a streetlamp and dogs steal dinner from a poor tramp, while cats and dogs do somersaults! Dogs play soccer with balloons and rip off the referee’s pants! At a pet hospital (featuring a dog-tor, of course), the animals hide from their shots, and at a school they bedevil the teacher by scampering from desk to desk and doing all kinds of canine acrobatics.

A video segment in the middle explains how Popovich has rescued all of his cats and dogs from animal shelters. He says he doesn’t train these animals; he just lets them show off their natural talents and personalities. Some cats love to jump, some love to climb—he provides them with the opportunity to do so, and it just happens to be in front of an appreciative audience. He believes that contact with animals enriches human life and helps counter the overwhelming influence of the internet, television, and other electronic media that disconnect us from the natural world. But fear not, Comedy Pet Theatre isn’t trying to sell you an agenda; if your kids come away with a greater appreciation of animals, that’s purely a side effect of watching Popovich’s obvious joy at playing with his pets.

The culminating act is the full complement of cats: 16 of them! Cats jumping up on Popovich’s shoulder, leaping over hurdles and through hoops, climbing upside down, walking on top of balls and on parallel bars, riding on top of dogs who are walking on their hind legs—pretty much anything you can imagine a cat doing, these cats will do.  For anyone who’s ever tried to get their own pet cat to do anything, this sequence will be flat-out flabbergasting.

The audience adores the animals for doing what they’re told, but they adore them all the more for not doing what they’re told. It’s like the outtakes at the end of movies where actors trip or flub their lines, only it’s happening before your eyes and the dogs and cats are just following their most natural impulses. You won’t be able to help yourself, it’s adorable.

— August Evans