Round-up of Non-Events in and Around KW.

A total of 64 Cuban migrants repatriated on Sunday

A total of 64 Cuban migrants were interdicted at sea in four different incidents last week and repatriated Sunday to the island by a Coast Guard cutter.

On Monday, the crew of the Cutter Drummond interdicted a go-fast vessel carrying 29 migrants and two suspected smugglers 35 miles south of the Dry Tortugas.

The two suspected smugglers were transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Key West, Fla.

Earlier in the week a go-fast vessel carrying 22 additional migrants was spotted 75 miles west of Dry Tortugas and as intercepted.

The suspected smugglers were turned over to ICE in Key West. One of the 22 Cuban migrants was be transferred to Guántanamo Bay, Cuba.

In another incident, 10 Cuban migrants were found aboard a rustic vessel 40 miles south of Islamorada.

Finally, the Coast Guard received a report that a Good Samaritan located a vessel with four Cuban migrants aboard approximately 15 miles south of Big Pine Key on July 21.

''Today's repatriations should send a clear message to smugglers and those who hire them,'' said Lt. J.G. Eric Pare, a Coast Guard Seventh District law enforcement duty officer.

``We will continue to aggressively patrol the waters surrounding Florida and we will interdict people trying to illegally enter the United States from the sea. Those who have violated laws will be held accountable in a court of law.''

At Hemingway's home, claws are out

The notion that Charlie Chaplin is putting on a show as he snoozes on the Hemingway Home and Museum veranda — well, that's enough to make a cat laugh.

But neither the fluffy feline, named for the Little Tramp because of his tuxedo-like markings, nor his 46 companions lazing around the late author's estate are likely to be amused if the U.S. government succeeds in designating them an animal act and restricts their freedom.

Pampered cats, some of them descendants of Ernest Hemingway's six-toed pet Snowball, have had the run of the leafy compound for generations.

They are named for the writer's wives, fictional characters, Hollywood friends and colleagues. Zane Grey and Truman Capote often can be found napping in the flower beds between the villa and the pool. Archibald MacLeish prefers the cool tile floor of the master bathroom. Emily Dickinson seems indifferent to the camera flashes catching her in repose on a predecessor's tombstone, rarely bestirring herself from the limelight.

Fed organic cat food, tended weekly by a visiting veterinarian, and petted, photographed and cooed at by adoring tourists, the cats have become a beloved quirk of this Key West landmark.

But the languid lifestyle of the Hemingway Home cats is threatened by proposals from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that they be treated like performers in a zoo or circus. The feds want the museum to obtain an animal exhibition license, which would require staff to "protect" the felines from contact with spectators and cage them after their daily "performance" ends when the front gate closes at 5 p.m.

"Our cats do not do tricks. They don't do flips and jump through hoops. They're our pets!" said Jacque Sands, manager and 14-year veteran at the museum, where the cats can curl up in kitty condos scattered through the gardens. "They own us. We don't own them."

The trouble began as a spat with a neighbor several years ago. Now, the conflict pits the cats' keepers against two former members of the Florida Keys Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

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, said the museum's chief executive, Michael Morawski.

The Hemingway cats rarely strayed from the 1-acre property surrounded by a 5-foot brick wall until Schultz arrived about eight years ago and established a feral-cat feeding site half a block away, Morawski said. Cats began disappearing over the wall and turning up at the SPCA as captured strays, he said.

In October 2003, a USDA inspector posing as a tourist surveyed the grounds and later ordered the museum staff to get a license or face $10,000 in daily fines. Since then, a veterinarian from the USDA has made repeated inspections of the property, recommending increasingly restrictive measures each time, Morawski said. The cat population is down from its usual 60 or so, although museum managers are eagerly expecting a litter in early autumn to replace a generation succumbing to old age — including Mark Twain, whose cancer claimed him at 21 last year, and 20-year-old Trevor Howard, who was euthanized in July when his kidneys failed.

Most 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, Morawski said.

There are now Web-based petitions 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.

Judge tosses condo lawsuit

A federal judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that owners of Santa Maria condominiums filed against the developer when the buyers were unable to "flip" their condos after ponying up a $230,000 deposit. Six people who paid the deposit said in the lawsuit that the developers and Realtors led them to believe they wouldn't have to come up with the balance of the $1.2 million sales price because they would be able to sell the condos at a higher price even before construction was finished. That was not the case, given the decline in the real estate market, and the owners now have to forfeit their deposit or close on the property. "The plaintiffs were assured by the defendants that once the building was under construction, prices would increase dramatically, as they were contracting at a bargain price, therefore there would be no issue with the plaintiffs being able to resell their investment contracts to somebody else at a profit," the lawsuit said. "The plaintiffs were assured that defendants had a program in place which would guarantee that the plaintiffs would make a substantial profit on their investment and would not have to close on the purchase of the units." The buyers also admitted in the lawsuit that they had not read their investment contracts, but had relied on their Realtors' claims. "The written contract was very clear and unambiguous," said Ed Scales, one of the lawyers representing Santa Maria. "The judge held that we didn't do anything to prevent these folks from reading their contracts. He said it was 'entirely unreasonable' for people to plop down [that amount of money] as a deposit and not read the contract." Scales pointed out how laughable the situation would be if the roles were reversed. "Let's say the market suddenly went up by 25 percent," he said Friday. "Would the developers then be able to say that the buyers owe us 25 percent more money because we had not anticipated the change in the value?" The final written order from the judge should be signed next week, and the plaintiffs then have 30 days to file an appeal, Scales said.