More than just your average copy cats

The guest performers at the Geneva Public Library Saturday ended their acrobatic show with music: Pinky strummed the guitar, Nue banged on the piano and Dakota hit the drums.

Then they all went back into their pet carriers for the ride home.

The hourlong "Acro-Cats" show included mostly cats, except for a few domesticated rats and a chicken who appeared briefly to walk the high wire and add a bit of diversity.

The crowd of about 225, parents with children who were mostly pre-school age, seemed to enjoy every moment of the show with a lot of "ooohs," "aaahs" and applause.

Pudge pushed a toy cart and kittens Pandora and Ice jumped through hoops from one stool to another.

Other feline performers walked up a ladder, jumped over hurdles about 2 feet high and went from one side to the other on a teeter-totter.

But the star of the show, according to owner and trainer Samantha Martin of Chicago, is fluffy white Tuna. She loves to ring her bell, jump over hurdles and switch on a light with a green bulb.

Her reward is bits of canned or fresh -- you guessed it -- tuna.

"Cats don't work for love like a dog does," Martin told the audience, who also apologized for Oswald, who scooted through a lower rung of a hurdle rather than jumping. "I found out that cats need a special staging area and a lot of treats. We use positive re-enforcement."

Martin, who owns all the cats except for Pandora, who belongs to her assistant Stephanie Zarat, has been training animals since she was 10. She began working with rats but says she "up-sized" to cats because there aren't many trained cats out there, she said.

Martha Kemp, 12, of Geneva, can appreciate that. She tried training her own cats, Cocoa and Sabrina, after borrowing a library book on the subject.

But she wasn't very successful.

"They didn't like the treats," Martha said of her own cats.

But she and her mother enjoyed the show.

"It was pretty enticing to hear about a show with cats doing tricks," said Karin Kemp, Martha's mother.

Amanda Rose, 6, of Geneva and her brother Brandon, 8, both took time out from their busy schedules and saw the performance before going to their soccer games.

Amanda liked the kittens and Brandon liked seeing the cats jump from one stool to another.

"I loved it," said Carol VanDeVeire of Batavia, who was with her friend, Kay Arneson. "I've never seen trained cats before."

"We want to take them home," Arneson added.

The show was free, but the library requested that guests bring a nonperishable food item.

Martin's cats also perform at pet expos and art galleries.