The World is Stupid IV

Rome's municipal government has passed a law to protect the city's goldfish from unfair treatment.

• The fish can no longer be given away as prizes and they must be given a full-sized aquarium.
• In addition to protection for fish, the law requires dog owners to walk their canines daily or face a $625 fine.
• It bans the display of pets-for-sale in store windows, and gives legal recognition to "gattare," the "cat ladies" who feed an army of strays.
• Also banned: choke and electrical collars and, for dogs and cats, declawing and the clipping of tails and ears for cosmetic reasons....

"We have the most beautiful laws in the world, and nobody enforces them," said Silvia Viviani, a retired opera soprano who co-founded the Torre Argentina cat sanctuary, a home for 250 strays ensconced in ancient ruins at the site where Julius Caesar was assassinated. It is one of an estimated 800 cat "colonies" in Rome that the new law will help by forbidding construction projects from displacing their feline residents.

Despite her reservations about enforcement, Viviani praised the new law. She only wished it went further, to include mandatory sterilization of cats and dogs — something, she says, that is still resisted in Italy because of "machismo."