I believe that Cherokee does not support .htaccess files (which could be though of as a good thing in terms of speed).
But, how do I do the things I used to do with .htaccess with Cherokee? Also, some of my clients host their sites on my webserver. How can they utilise .htaccess stuff now that I plan on using Cherokee?
From the Cherokee FAQ (bottom - http://www.cherokee-project.com/doc/other_faq.html):
But you can try things in Cherokee with "Handlers": http://www.cherokee-project.com/doc/modules_handlers.html