Bureaucrats Try Herding Cats
Demanding a license to let cats live on your lawn?
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Our government employees famously insist on helping us whether we need it or not. Logically, sooner or later, there must come a time when all real problems are receiving government attention leaving only imaginary problems for bureaucrats to sink their teeth into.
In the city of Key West, it would appear that things have reached this point: city residents seem to have so few problems that really need government assistance that area bureaucrats must look into the theater of the absurd for clients.
USA Today reports on how our government seeks to assist the cats which live on the grounds of Ernest Hemingway's former home in Key West:
The cats have been a popular tourist attraction in quirky Key West since the museum opened in 1964. But until September, their future was unclear. The museum was embroiled in legal wranglings with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which wanted to remove them to protect them.
Finally, an outside veterinarian came up with a compromise: Install a special fence around the 1-acre property that will keep the cats enclosed yet not mar the historic landmark.
Here we have a private museum whose grounds are inhabited by more than 50 cats which are greatly appreciated by the museum's customers.
That turns out to be the problem. Because museum customers look at the cats and like having them around, the USDA says that the museum is an exhibitor of cats and must obtain an official USDA Animal Welfare License. The museum says that the cats don't perform and aren't caged so they can't be exhibits.
The museum's lawyer claims that although people have liked looking at the cats since 1964, visitors pay to see Hemingway's home and office, not the cats. The museum says that the USDA is comparing the museum to a circus or a zoo just because there are cats on the premises.
The legal dispute began in 2003 when the Florida Keys Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals raised concerns about the cats' welfare with the federal government. The Guardian reported that a cat expert was brought in to assess the animals' welfare as part of settling the lawsuit; he eventually suggested putting a fence around the property.
Let's think about this for a moment. The cats are such an attraction that the museum puts pictures of them on their web site and sells pictures of the cats in the gift shop even though they don't perform and aren't kept in cages. The museum provides veterinary care for the cats and, given their value as a drawing card, management would have to be utter idiots to let anything happen to them.
Anybody who's tried to get a cat to perform knows that it's extremely difficult. The cats aren't really exhibits and they get better care than most cats. These cats and their ancestors have lived in peace for half a century without complaint; but no, the feds just have to get involved.
The manifest health and happiness of the furry beasts counts not at all; instead, civil servants claim that without an animal license for the museum, the cats would have to be trapped and removed from the premises for their own protection. Where will they go? What will happen to them? Will they be better off?
It's hard to imagine how they could be better off anywhere else than as pampered residents of a popular museum in the tropical paradise of Key West. Their actual welfare is beside the point, of course, what the bureaucracy cares about is whether they're licensed.
The museum could ignore the cats and claim they're feral. They'd have to discontinue feeding the cats and stop caring for them, but then they'd be wild animals which happen to hang around where they can be seen and no license would be needed. The cats would end up worse off because some of them would starve to death, but the bureaucracy would be satisfied, which is, after all, the main thing.
Consider the cost of this five-year lawsuit between the museum and the Federal Government. We've commented on the tendency of a bureaucracy to want to extend its reach regardless of the merits of their case. Any bureaucracy that issues licenses for anything always wants to force more and more people and organizations to have to get its licenses - how else can they grow?
In the end, the USDA forced the museum to build an unneeded fence around the property to protect the cats but was unable to persuade the museum to buy an animal license. There was no evidence of any danger to the cats as far back as 1964, but putting up a fence was cheaper than fighting with bureaucrats who had no need to show that their activities benefited anyone other than themselves.
One worries about the possibility of the next generation of bureaucrats renewing the fight, though. Remember, the USDA forced the museum to build a fence - thus, in effect, putting the previously free-roaming cats in a cage. And, of course, visitors are still looking at them. How can they be argued as being anything other than "on display"?
Maybe they should make the visitors wear blindfolds on the way in, so they can't actually see the cats until they're inside? Goodness knows the bureaucrats seem to be blind as bats, at least where common sense is concerned.
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What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
Who else wants to start a new country in space some where... sure it'll be just as bad in a few hundred years but until then maybe we could get some sanity.
Leave it to the government to actually try it.
What are they going to do next, let bulls run loose in the Smithsonian china shop?
An interesting insight into the current "gay marriage" controversy!
- Ron ^*^
The Times says that the feds won. Note the last sentence, “Nevertheless, it is not the court’s role to evaluate the wisdom of federal regulations.” Get set for more regulatory madness and economic problems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/us/cats-at-hemingway-museum-draw-a-legal-battle.html?_r=0
The museum’s nine-year bid to keep the cats beyond the reach of the Department of Agriculture ended in failure this month. The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that the agency has the power to regulate the cats under the Animal Welfare Act, which applies to zoo and traveling circus animals, because the museum uses them in advertisements, sells cat-related merchandise online and makes them available to paying tourists.
In other words, the cats are a living, breathing exhibit and require a federal license.
“The most ludicrous part of the whole thing is that if we were really dealing with the health and welfare of the cats, this would have never been an issue,” said Michael A. Marowski, the great-nephew of the woman who bought the Hemingway house in 1961, the year Hemingway died, and opened it as a museum in 1964.
“These cats are so well taken care of,” he said, “but because there is a book, and this book tells us that exhibited animals need to be kept this way, we have been put through this.”
Mr. Marowski is pondering whether to appeal to the Supreme Court.
In his view, the tale of the Hemingway cats is nothing more than federal regulation run roughshod over the myriad local and state laws that govern domesticated animals. The cats, most of which bear the names of famous people, have long received weekly veterinarian visits, and a vast majority are spayed or neutered.
The cats eat well, are free to lounge on Hemingway’s furniture (because it is also their house), and even have their own cemetery near the garden, where Frank Sinatra lies buried within arms’ reach of Zsa Zsa Gabor and where Marilyn Monroe is one sultry glance from Mr. Bette Davis (it is Key West, after all).
In fact, when the Agriculture Department sent People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to assess the situation in 2005, the group’s investigator concluded: “What I found was a bunch of fat, happy and relaxed cats. God save the cats.”
The appellate court agreed that “the museum has always kept, fed and provided weekly veterinary care for the Hemingway cats.” In their ruling, the three judges even injected a dose of understanding.
“We appreciate the museum’s somewhat unique situation, and we sympathize with its frustration,” the ruling states. “Nevertheless, it is not the court’s role to evaluate the wisdom of federal regulations.”