Georgia College and had nothing much to do. He came for a month, he stayed for the season. The kept woman now had a kept man.
“When I first came I wanted to be with Kathleen,” Khris said. “She was my first love in high school and will always be the love of my life. But after about the first month I grew attached to the cats and I couldn’t see myself leaving. No matter what, I wanted to stay with them. No matter what, I wanted the act.”
A battle for the center ring arose.
After two seasons in the ring Kathleen had begun to tire of the pressure. She wanted to give up performing in the ring but still retain control of the tigers’ breeding and care. Khris, meanwhile, had begun to fantasize about performing, but he was reluctant to take the reins of the act without control of the tigers’ welfare as well. Inevitably a split occurred: Khris moved to the couch in Kathleen’s trailer; Kathleen started dating Khris’s brother; and Josip, who by this time had taken up with another woman in Germany, got trapped in the middle: his ex-girlfriend had de facto abdicated his cat act, all but handing it over to her ex-boyfriend, whom he, the owner, had never met.
The situation came to a dramatic head just hours after the new tent was raised, just three days before the opening performance of the season. Josip had signed a contract, his cats would be in the show, but Kathleen refused to perform, even though her picture was in the program and her portrait was on the front of the banner truck along the circus midway. Johnny and Doug were in a panic: the show that still bore Clyde Beatty’s name needed a cat act at all costs. Finally, on Wednesday, just minutes before the dress rehearsal, the owners announced the resolution: the act that was owned by the Legendary Josip Marcan, an act that had been trained in part by his former girlfriend, the Lovely Kathleen Umstead, would be presented for the upcoming season by her now estranged boyfriend, the Great Unknown, Khris Allen.
But one catch: Kathleen would still be with the show and she’d still be living in the same trailer as Khris.
After having the cats sit on their hind legs, Khris moves steadily through the heart of the program: a two-tiger rollover on the ground, a nine-cat walking carousel around the ring, and a hind-leg hop by Tobruk designed to show off the prowess of a full-grown tiger. In a further maturation of the European style, all the cats in Khris’s act perform natural tasks—walking, sitting, leaping, rolling—with no jumping through hoops, no prancing through fire, and no wrestling with the trainer in mock jungle fashion. To exemplify this point, Khris liked to tell reporters along the route that he was not a “lion tamer” at all, but a “cat choreographer.” He didn’t teach tricks, he said, he “enhanced natural behaviors.” In short, he was a diva of cat nouveau.
The cats, for their part, seem to love their new, ennobled status. With each behavior, they glide slowly, almost genteelly, through the routine as if they were walking through a Victorian parlor dance. Occasionally one will pause, slap a flirtatious paw at another cat, or growl menacingly at the trainer. When this happened, Khris would snap his eight-foot kangaroo-hide whip or flick his leather riding crop in the tiger’s direction. Nothing too hostile, only commanding. He knows he must stay in control.
“The cats are very sensitive to my moods,” he said. “If they know I’ve had a bad day, they’ll toy with me and do stuff just to piss me off. Sometimes it’s because there’s a big crowd, and they’ll think, ‘Oh, he won’t discipline me because of all the people.’ If it’s a small crowd, I can be a little bit more of a disciplinarian. It’s just like if you go into a supermarket with a kid and he’s pulling stuff off the shelf. If there are a lot of people around, you scold him. If there are not so many people around, you spank his butt. If he’s been doing it a
“When I first came I wanted to be with Kathleen,” Khris said. “She was my first love in high school and will always be the love of my life. But after about the first month I grew attached to the cats and I couldn’t see myself leaving. No matter what, I wanted to stay with them. No matter what, I wanted the act.”
A battle for the center ring arose.
After two seasons in the ring Kathleen had begun to tire of the pressure. She wanted to give up performing in the ring but still retain control of the tigers’ breeding and care. Khris, meanwhile, had begun to fantasize about performing, but he was reluctant to take the reins of the act without control of the tigers’ welfare as well. Inevitably a split occurred: Khris moved to the couch in Kathleen’s trailer; Kathleen started dating Khris’s brother; and Josip, who by this time had taken up with another woman in Germany, got trapped in the middle: his ex-girlfriend had de facto abdicated his cat act, all but handing it over to her ex-boyfriend, whom he, the owner, had never met.
The situation came to a dramatic head just hours after the new tent was raised, just three days before the opening performance of the season. Josip had signed a contract, his cats would be in the show, but Kathleen refused to perform, even though her picture was in the program and her portrait was on the front of the banner truck along the circus midway. Johnny and Doug were in a panic: the show that still bore Clyde Beatty’s name needed a cat act at all costs. Finally, on Wednesday, just minutes before the dress rehearsal, the owners announced the resolution: the act that was owned by the Legendary Josip Marcan, an act that had been trained in part by his former girlfriend, the Lovely Kathleen Umstead, would be presented for the upcoming season by her now estranged boyfriend, the Great Unknown, Khris Allen.
But one catch: Kathleen would still be with the show and she’d still be living in the same trailer as Khris.
After having the cats sit on their hind legs, Khris moves steadily through the heart of the program: a two-tiger rollover on the ground, a nine-cat walking carousel around the ring, and a hind-leg hop by Tobruk designed to show off the prowess of a full-grown tiger. In a further maturation of the European style, all the cats in Khris’s act perform natural tasks—walking, sitting, leaping, rolling—with no jumping through hoops, no prancing through fire, and no wrestling with the trainer in mock jungle fashion. To exemplify this point, Khris liked to tell reporters along the route that he was not a “lion tamer” at all, but a “cat choreographer.” He didn’t teach tricks, he said, he “enhanced natural behaviors.” In short, he was a diva of cat nouveau.
The cats, for their part, seem to love their new, ennobled status. With each behavior, they glide slowly, almost genteelly, through the routine as if they were walking through a Victorian parlor dance. Occasionally one will pause, slap a flirtatious paw at another cat, or growl menacingly at the trainer. When this happened, Khris would snap his eight-foot kangaroo-hide whip or flick his leather riding crop in the tiger’s direction. Nothing too hostile, only commanding. He knows he must stay in control.
“The cats are very sensitive to my moods,” he said. “If they know I’ve had a bad day, they’ll toy with me and do stuff just to piss me off. Sometimes it’s because there’s a big crowd, and they’ll think, ‘Oh, he won’t discipline me because of all the people.’ If it’s a small crowd, I can be a little bit more of a disciplinarian. It’s just like if you go into a supermarket with a kid and he’s pulling stuff off the shelf. If there are a lot of people around, you scold him. If there are not so many people around, you spank his butt. If he’s been doing it a
Similar Books
