If you've been to Key West and visited the Ernest Hemingway Museum, you've seen them: fifty of so of them, slinking around in the heat, sunning themselves around the grounds, and drinking from the enormous urinal that Hemingway himself allegedly trucked down from Sloppy Joe's bar to serve as their water fountain. We're talking cats, of course, the many descendants of Hemingway's own Snowball, who have taken over karmic ownership of the property since Papa died. Like Snowball (and like my own cat, coincidentally), most of these cats are polydactyl, with more than the usual number of toes on their front feet. They look as if they're wearing catchers' mitts.

Anyway, there's a point to all this: According to a story on National Public Radio and an article in the Christian Science Monitor, a visitor to the Hemingway House filed a complaint with federal authorities a few years back, alleging that the cats were not being treated well. A ruling on that complaint recently came down from the courts, saying that under the federal Animal Welfare Act and Constitution's commerce clause, the U.S. Department of Agriculture can in fact regulate how the museum feeds and cares for the cats. It may even mandate building a higher wall to keep them safe, or giving them each their own sleeping crate.

Is this a CATastrophe of CATastrophic proportions? Will the Tea Party start complaining about the excesses of ObamaCATcare? Who knows. Mostly, I just think it's kind of a hoot. Or maybe a howl. Yeah, that's it: a howl.