Monday, July 30, 2007

Feds And Cats Fight, Less Than One Hundred Miles From Guantanamo

Since we have a minor controversy running in the comments about my current, as Ron puts it, a-muse, in Stupid Government Stuff, immediately below, here’s a link to an explanation of the Federal Animal Welfare Act at the USDA site:

Furballs: Now Federal Offense

I’ll leave interpretation and application to the the Key West cat imbroglio to you. I just hope the cats' lawyers (now there's specialization) do better than the people representing the detainees. After further thought, with the same results as in Guantanamo, the cats will be detained in Key West for years before any possibility of release.

9 comments:

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

When living, my grandmother was a cat person. She had between five and ten cats wandering around her 110 acre property.

My grandmother was blind, deaf, and afflicted with Alzheimer's. She couldn't take care of herself, let alone a gaggle of cats.

When she finally left that property to enter an assisted care facility, the cats were so feral and unruly that the authorities had to be called in.

Now that's a situation that maybe needed an intervention -- but not by the government.

This Hemingway house situation seems to me to be a case of too much government ruining it for everyone. Can't say for sure if Guantanamo is as well.

fermicat said...

I don't see how this is going to end well for the cats.

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

Maybe if the cats were to admit to operating a terrorist cell, we could all just go back to living our lives like we did before this all happened.

Dave said...

I did find it interesting when skimming the USDA site that it isn't interested in people that keep people for slaughter (though in its defense, it regulates that elsewhere), only people that keep animals alive.

From another skewed viewpoint, this law is another example of the
Feds' long reach into local affairs by way of the Commerce Clause. Just what "interstate commerce" effect do fifty cats living in a compound in Key West have on the national interest? Hedy was probably right, they are protecting us interstate tourists.

Dave said...

That second people in my last comment should read "animals." Hannibal Lector has no involvement to date in this story.

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

"Soylent Green is peeeeeople!!!!"

fermicat said...

Those cats are protecting us from dangerous foreign mice.

Dave said...

Pos, one of the great movies of all time.

Fermi, another reason to build a wall. Those foreign mice couldn't have gotten here if we had built a big, slick wall, what twenty feet out in the ocean and where there is no water, right on the border, not just over into foreign territory, with the slick stuff and a some really tiny and and deadly barbed wire. The cats are our last line of defense. Cheney, Gonzales and the new Joint Chief of Staff, whatever his name is, should be browbeating those USDA people for their obvious inability to understand that the national security of our homeland is at risk given the current antipathy towards Hemingway cats.

fermicat said...

:-)