United States:The languid lifestyle of the cats at the writer's former home is threatened by government plans to designate them an 'animal act', writes Carol J Williamsin Key West, Florida.
The notion that Charlie Chaplin is putting on a show as he snoozes on the Hemingway House veranda - well, that's enough to make a cat laugh.
But neither the fluffy feline, named after the Little Tramp because of his tuxedo-like markings, nor his 46 siblings lazing around the late author's estate, are likely to be amused if the US government succeeds in designating them an "animal act" and restricts their freedom.
The pampered descendants of Ernest Hemingway's six-toed cat Snowball have had the run of the leafy compound for generations.
They are named after the writer's wives, fictional characters, Hollywood friends and colleagues.
Zane Grey and Truman Capote can often be found napping in the flower beds between the villa and the pool. Archibald MacLeish prefers the cool tiled floor of the master bathroom. Emily Dickinson seems indifferent to the camera flashes catching her in repose on a predecessor's tombstone.
Fed organic catfood, tended weekly by a veterinarian and petted, photographed and cooed at by tourists, the cats have become a much-loved attraction at the Key West, Florida, landmark.
But the languid lifestyle of the Hemingway House cats is threatened by proposals from the US department of agriculture to treat them as if they were performers in a zoo or animal circus.
The department wants the museum to obtain an animal exhibition licence that would require staff members to "protect" the cats from contact with spectators and cage them after their daily "performance" ends when the front gate closes at 5pm.
"Our cats do not do tricks. They don't do flips and jump through hoops. They're our pets!" says Jacque Sands, on-site manager and a 14-year veteran at the museum, where the cats can also curl up in kitty condos scattered throughout the gardens. "They own us. We don't own them."
Born of a spat several years ago with a neighbour, the conflict has pitted their keepers against two former members of the Florida Keys Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Motivated by concern for what they considered an excessive cat population on the property and the potential for the cats to escape and be run over, Gwen Hawtof and Debra Schultz are believed to have brought the museum to the attention of those charged with applying the 1966 Animal Welfare Act, according to museum chief executive Michael Morawski.
The Hemingway cats rarely strayed from the one-acre property, surrounded by a five-foot brick wall, until Schultz arrived about eight years ago and established a feral cat feeding site half a block away, says Morawski. Cats began disappearing over the wall and turning up at the SPCA as captured strays, he says.
In October 2003, a department of agriculture inspector posing as a tourist surveyed the grounds and later issued the museum staff an order to get a licence or face $10,000 (€7,300) in daily fines. A veterinarian from the department has made repeated inspections of the property since then, recommending increasingly restrictive measures each time, says Morawski.
Neither Hawtof nor Schultz has a listed phone number and an SPCA spokeswoman said neither is associated with the society anymore.
A spokeswoman for the department said the agency was not insisting on individual cages for the cats, just that "enclosures be set up so other animals can't enter and the cats can't get into the street". She could not comment on the exact changes sought at the museum because the case has become a legal matter. The museum has challenged the department's designation in the district court, which has sent the case back to the parties to seek a negotiated solution.
The cat population is down from its usual 60 or so, though museum managers are expecting a litter in early autumn to replace the generation succumbing to old age, such as Mark Twain, whose cancer claimed him at 21 last year, and 20-year-old Trevor Howard, who had to be put down in July when his kidneys failed.
Many of the cats are spayed or neutered, but a couple of males and females are allowed to breed to maintain what museum staff consider the optimal population, says Morawski.
There is now a web-based petition to "Save the Hemingway Cats", and the Key West city commission has exempted the museum from a city law prohibiting more than four domestic pets per household.
The commission pronounced the cats "an integral part of the history and ambience of the Hemingway House", which draws 300,000 visitors each year.
Tourists oppose the government moves to restrict the free-ranging felines, whose names and haughty deportment conjure images of an era when the two-legged Ava Gardner, Spencer Tracy, Audrey Hepburn and Rita Hayworth mingled with literary legends like Hemingway, MacLeish and Simone de Beauvoir.
After almost four years of legal wrangling and acrimonious back-and-forth, the case of the exhibited but non-performing cats may be heading towards compromise.
The department postponed a late-July administrative hearing to allow an animal behaviourist from the University of Florida, Terry Curtis, to render an independent assessment of how confinement would affect the cats' mental and physical health. Her report is expected in two to three weeks.
- (LA Times/Washington Post service)