Furry Friends

So apparently, Animal welfare officials are demanding that cats that have roamed Ernest Hemingway's Florida home for decades be subject to laws that would require them to be locked up at night.

50 "free range" cats, descendants of Hemingway's pets, have lived in the Hemingway home - a popular museum - for decades, and are now considered an essential part of the collection. But two ex-members of the "Florida Keys Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" (FKSPCA, let's call it) have complained that the number of cats is excessive and that they should be 'protected' from the museum's visitors - i. e. locked away in a secure enclosure.

Now, call me judgemental if you will (I know - me, judgemental? crazy) but don't those two people sound like the very thing the phrase "do-gooder" was invented for? Moreover, don't they sound like two people who, out of all the people in the world, would benefit most from a sound spanking? I mean, yeah, let's lock 50 cats away from the public where previously they've been able to roam free in the name of protecting them from cruelty. That makes perfect sense. It's not even as if the cats are mistreated. They appear to live what can only be described as a life of luxury - free to laze in the sunshine, visited regularly by a vet, fed the best food, "fixed" so they can have sex as much as they like without fear of consequences - a veritably cat's Life Of Reilly.

What interests me is that the complaints were made by two people described as 'former members' of the FKSPCA - indicating, to my mind, that they are so do-gooderish, so self-righteous, so downright worthy-of-a-good-spanking, that even their parent organisation has disowned them:

"Ok, Bob, Alice, we bore with you on the old lady who forgot to feed her cat that one time. We bore with you on the chihuahua who wasn't wearing a doggy-coat in winter. We bore with you on the alligator they tranquilized and then forcibly removed from old Mr. Cozaro's living room. But the Hemingway cats? That's it - you're out."

I hope that's what happened. The world is a poorer place if it wasn't.