Wednesday, August 02, 2006
 
What Would Papa Do?
The old man and the six-toed cats: Hemingway home in dispute:
    The caretakers of Ernest Hemingway's Key West home want a federal judge to intervene in their dispute with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the six-toed cats that roam the property.

    More than 50 descendants of a multi-toed cat the novelist received as a gift in 1935 wander the grounds of the home, where Hemingway lived for more than 10 years and wrote "A Farewell to Arms" and "To Have and Have Not."

    The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum disputes the USDA's claim that it is an "exhibitor" of cats and needs to have a USDA Animal Welfare License, according to a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Miami.

    "What they're comparing the Hemingway house to is a circus or a zoo because there are cats on the premises," Cara Higgins, the home's attorney, said Friday. "This is not a traveling circus. These cats have been on the premises forever."
He would have broken a walking stick over his head is what he would have done. Or shot himself, perhaps; our world does not accommodate men of Papa's stature and temperment any more. Instead, it allows attorneys and government functionaries to live the lives to which they've become accustomed, at our expense and at the expense of our mythology.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:41 PM
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To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."