I knew from the age of 7 that I wanted to be a trainer, so I started training domestic dogs at the age of 9, I have a natural talent for it, so I won the prize. I also always try to rescue the injured local wild animals and take care of these animals to restore their health. I am a bit ostracized by society. I really don’t fit my town. When you don’t have many friends, you have more time for yourself. But it allowed me to feel comfortable on my skin, learn how to entertain myself and get along well with animals.
When I was 16 years old, I got my first mouse, and I remember reading articles about how they are very smart. Then, when I was 23 years old, I moved to Chicago, and I really found my position and my people. I work in a pet shop, and I keep a group of rats that I have trained. I even printed some small business cards that read “The Rat Company: Well-trained Acro-Rats for all occasions.” The Acro-Rats show is very popular. I was embraced because of what I was rejected in my early years.
I keep telling people that one day someone will walk into the door of a pet shop and want a mouse to watch a movie. Everyone thinks I am crazy. Well, one day, an independent film crew came to the pet shop and needed a mouse.
I quit my job in the pet shop and participated in this free movie show. A TV station showed up and asked me to shoot with the mouse. They showed how I trained them to answer the phone and perform skills. Then this TV clip was broadcast across the country, and someone in Italy saw it and asked me to fly to Italy to perform with the mice on Christmas Eve. At that time everything was rolling in like a snowball, and I appeared in various TV shows. Before becoming a “catgirl”, I was a “mouse girl”. It’s really a “mouse getting rich” story. But the rats are small, so I can only perform in smaller venues, such as nightclubs, and I realized that I can’t make a living in this way. So I expanded the scale, and I am doing a wildlife education program to make ends meet.
In the early 2000s, I realized that I had not realized my dream of training animals for film and television. Cats are the second most popular pet in the United States, but as we all know, working with them is a nightmare. I tried to incorporate cats and mice into my live performances, but it was a disaster. But then a cat named Tuna came into my life and she was amazing. So I decided to train her to perform various skills, and began to take her to the pet show. She will ring the bell, I will hand out the cards, and the tuna will start some photography and film work.
I use clicker training, which is all about active reinforcement. Cats do not respond well to any form of punishment. Through the clicker training, you can click the clicker while serving snacks. So the sound of clicking means that they have just done something that can earn them a reward. You can also use the goal stick to guide them to perform certain actions. This is a way of conveying the behavior you want your cat to exhibit.
Samantha Martin
Samantha Martin
In 2004, I formed the cat band. I was touring with my wildlife show in the RV, and I trained tuna and a few other cats to form a cat band that played piano, drums and guitar. They do play musical instruments.Their paws are natural pickers
Guitar, they did hit the keys on the keyboard. The drums are set up in such a way that they hit one side of the wooden sticks, causing them to move up and down on the drum.
I put the cat on the table of the RV, and when we stop somewhere, I open the door and ask passers-by if they want to see something cool. The effect was very good, so when I came back from that tour, I decided to make a complete show with cats.
I’m still running a company that provides cat performances in movies and TV, but I decided to do what I did to mice years ago. This show has a life of its own. They started in art galleries and people showed up in droves. There are many people who love cats.
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Samantha Martin
Because cats are my pets—they are former orphans, rescuers, and vagrants—I live with them and have raised a lot since they were babies. So I see what they do on their own; do they spend a lot of time on heights or do they prefer to stay on the ground? Do they often use their paws or their noses? I came up with the technique from there.
In a show like this, you must be able to laugh at yourself and feel embarrassed when the cat does nothing. I have to think of lines to fill the air. We have now visited the United States and Canada once. We did a great job in Texas, and people liked us in places like New Orleans, Portland, San Francisco, and San Diego.
We have already filled the 600-seat venue, but because the cat is small, I like private venues; those between 200-500 seats. In 2009, the mission changed a bit because I started raising cats, and so far I have raised more than 300 cats and kittens. So this show is now also about spreading information about rescue.
The show now starts with the first meeting of the new tuna. Sadly, the original tuna has passed away, and now two new tuna lowered the applause and rang the bell. Then I talked about cats and did a clicker training demonstration with rescue cats. Next, we will do the part of the cat show that is still learning skills, and then the magical acrobatic cat will perform with the music, sometimes surprising, sometimes it is a train crash. But even if it was a train crash, people still said it was the best performance they had ever seen in their life. Then I said some cats, there was a game of two cats and a chicken, and finally the rock cat band played. This is a nine-member band with cow bells, chimes, cymbals and tambourines, saxophones, trumpets and clarinets, so it is really a rock cat and a jazz cat now.
We have a cat named Jax who knows how to do all the tricks, but once she decided that all she wanted to do was sit on the skull. It was Halloween. I bought a skull for the show. She really liked it. Sometimes she would sit on the skull, but then she decided that what she really wanted to do was become an audience. She roams the audience and works in the crowd. Sometimes she would sit on someone’s lap for 20 minutes, and sometimes she would come back with banknotes. This is really interesting. At some point in the show, I announced her and her tricks. She always came back to the stage because she didn’t want to miss the curtain call.
In 2019, I walked on the road for about 9 months and I was a little tired. A year before I was diagnosed with cancer, but I survived and then went back there. Then I was deceived and the pandemic hit, so punch after punch. After nearly two years, we were back on the road and recently completed a tour of the East Coast of the United States. We now have a 45-foot-long tour bus, and the last third of the bus is Cat Paradise. But there are also spaces for humans to sleep, as well as refrigerators, showers and bathrooms.
I wish I had celebrity fans, but I just participated in a lot of TV shows and I did appear on Netflix TV show Cat man. I’m on the evening show Stephen Colbert, But the cat exploded in that show; there were only three shows. Stephen Colbert is a good sport, but I had hoped it would be great, but it is not the case. When we did those talk shows, the cats were freezing, but they were okay in a live theater with hundreds of audiences!
I had to retire a few cats, and I still have some 16-year-old cats still in the show. The future will be full of tears and heartbreak, because I will lose my family. I keep some of these cats because they are two days old, and I might adopt more.
When I died, I had so many followers, I knew that these cats and any other cats I adopted would be taken care of. Until then, I will keep going because I can make a difference; I am saving the lives of animals.
Samantha Martin is the founder and trainer of The Amazing Acro Cats and Rock Cats. She also helps rescue, foster and adopt cats through Rock Rescue Cats.Learn more about both Rockcatsrescue.org. Follow them On YouTube.
All views expressed in this article are the author’s own views.
As told to Jenny Howard.
