Zitat

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"Hairy Truman," a six-toed "Hemingway cat" walks on a table at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Fla., on Sept. 25, 2008.
By A. Pawlowski, TODAY.com contributor

A popular tourist attraction has lost another round in the legal battle over who is in charge of the slinky creatures with nine lives and six toes roaming its grounds.

The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that the government does have the power to regulate the dozens of cats that live at the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum in Key West, Fla. — a notion the attraction has fought for years.

The museum declined to comment about the court decision.

Some 250,000 visitors flock to the site each year to experience the house where the famed American writer lived from 1931 to 1938 and see the polydactyl (six-toed) felines whose company he enjoyed...

But the government began taking a closer look at the operation several years ago, when a visitor complained about the museum’s care of the animals to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to court documents.

In 2003, the USDA declared that the museum was an “animal exhibitor” subject to federal regulation under the Animal Welfare Act because it displayed the animals to the public for an admission fee and used the cats in its advertising. (The same act regulates circuses, zoos and carnivals.)

The museum balked at the decision, which would require it to do everything from cage the cats at night and tag each animal, to build “additional elevated resting surfaces” for the felines.

So in 2009, it filed a complaint in federal court arguing the Animal Welfare Act didn’t apply because it was only meant to protect animals “physically moving in interstate commerce” — while the cats spend their entire lives in one place. But the court ruled in favor of the government, and when the museum appealed, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the decision....

http://todaytravel.today.com/_news/2012/...way-museum?lite

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They're everywhere. Even Papa's cats aren't safe.

The government will not give anyone peace until it controls everything.

Quote: Sanguine wrote in post #1

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. . .
They're everywhere. Even Papa's cats aren't safe.

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