Not a dog-and-pony show
“Cat show for cat people! Five minutes! Don’t be late, we are never on time!” Dominique LeFort announces with a wink to chortling visitors strolling the docks. Cats cannot be trained, so goes conventional wisdom. Or at least they can’t be trained by anyone but Dominique. Dominique and his house cats, as silly as they are impressive, have traveled all over the country, performing in most every major American city. Fortunately for Floridians, they’ve made Key West their home.
Every evening at dusk by the docks near Mallory Square, the clever felines are unveiled. Dominique goads Chopin, the “smart one,” to climb the rope up to his pedestal. “Take your time, hurry up,” he chirps as Chopin hesitates to leap. Mandarine, the orange tabby, begins to make a move across a tightrope. “Stay where you are, do what you want!” Dominique shouts as he lights his ring of fire. One by one, his cats leap through the hoop on a high wire to the oohs and aahs of the gathered crowd.
Info
Address The docks behind the Westin Hotel, located at 245 Front Street, Key West, FL 33040, +1 305.304.7764, www.catmankeywest.com | Hours Daily at sunset | Tip Mallory Square comes alive for the nightly sunset festival. Street performers fill the plaza. You’ll find unusual characters like Big Bird walking around taking pictures for a dollar, a bagpiper playing native Scottish songs, and a man painted like a statue, holding a ball with an eager golden retriever at his feet.
Dominique has been a street performer for most of his adult life. He got his start as an aspiring entertainer at the Lecoq school, studying improvisation, modern dance, and miming. He became a clown under the stage name Rou Dou Dou, performing his one-hour, one-man show everywhere from Las Vegas to Montreal. It was during this time that – inspired by his daughter’s kitten, Chaton – that Dominique decided to incorporate cats into his act, and the legend of the Cat Man was born soon after.
Since 1981, Dominique and his crew of kitties have been entertaining the masses here at Key West Harbor. Against the backdrop of a setting sun, the frizzy-haired Frenchman, still sporting his circa-1980s mullet, struts around his impromptu circus ring like a wildly eccentric ringmaster, bantering with the audience, himself, and the sky above, as his cats put on a spectacle that rivals anything you’ll see under the Big Top.
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