Quaker Pet Group, LLC v. United States

Katzmann, Judge:

Catching sight of three tiny orphaned kittens wandering in a battlefield tent, President Abraham Lincoln directed Colonel Bowers of General Grant's staff: "Colonel, I hope you will see that these poor little motherless waifs are given plenty of milk and treated kindly." Some eighty years later, President Harry Truman is famously said to have remarked, "[i]f you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." It would certainly have been beyond the contemplation of the 16th or 33rd Presidents that their animals might be categorized as items or personal effects. Yet, the determination…