Hemingway's Cats

American author Ernest Hemingway is probably best known for his stories of bullfighters and macho protagonists. He was an avid hunter and fisherman, but he also had a soft spot for animals, especially cats. He is mostly associated with the six-toed cats with whom he shared his Key West home, and polydactyl cats have become synonymous with Hemingway cats. He was surrounded by cats his entire life, beginning with the menagerie of cats at his childhood home in Illinois, to Big Boy, the cat who lived with him at the time of his death in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961.

During his childhood, the Hemingway family spent summers in their cottage at Walloon Lake in Michigan. Usually, their cats would stay behind at the Oak Park, Illinois residence. Once, at the behest of the children, their mother, Grace Hemingway, smuggled their cat Catherine Tiger and her kittens onto the train. The porter, thinking he heard mewing, approached Mrs. Hemingway and asked if they had brought any animals on board. She emphatically denied it, and the porter left the family alone for the rest of the trip. Catherine Tiger and her kittens arrived at Walloon Lake without further incident. During extended stays at the lake house, young Ernest started collecting kittens from nearby farms.

In his memoir, A Moveable Feast (published posthumously in 1964), Hemingway wrote how a cat was his first son's babysitter. It was winter, and he didn't think it was right to take a baby out in the cold. Little Bumby was a well-behaved child who never cried, liked to observe his surroundings and, Hemingway bragged, never got bored. But Hemingway didn't want to take his son out in the cold and apparently, staying home that night was not an option for Hemingway. In A Moveable Feast he wrote: "There were no babysitters then and Bumby would stay happy in his tall cage bed with his big, loving cat named F. Puss." He chided people for thinking it was dangerous to leave a baby with a cat. He wrote, "The most ignorant and prejudiced said that a cat would suck a baby's breath and kill him. Others said that a cat . . . would smother him." He and his wife Hadley left their son in the crib with the cat, and when they returned home late that night, both Bumby and cat were sleeping.

From 1928-1938 Hemingway lived in Key West where the descendants of his most famous cats still live. Stanley Dexter, a boat captain and drinking buddy of Hemingway's, gave him a polydactyl cat named Snowball. Sailors considered polydactyls to be good luck, because they were excellent hunters. Polydactyl comes from the Greek word for "many digits." These cats are characterized by having six or more toes on their front paws. Normal cats have five toes each on their front paws. Polydactylism is a dominant gene, and only a polydactyl can parent another polydactyl. While this trait is popular among cat owners, especially Hemingway aficionados, polydactyls are not a recognized breed. Cat breeders consider polydactylism a genetic mutation. Despite the mutation, the trait is not debilitating. Polydactyl cats tend to have amazing manual dexterity. They are known to be able to open doors and to catch objects in their paws. They also show extraordinary climbing abilities. About half of the cats currently living at the Key West home are polydactyls.

Hemingway's cats were pampered. He had a fountain installed on the Key West property. He had an olive jar imported from Cuba. The base of the fountain was a urinal from the first location of Sloppy Joe's Bar. His then-wife Pauline camouflaged the urinal with marble tile.

From 1939-1960 Hemingway and his third wife Martha Gellhorn lived in their Cuban villa, Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm). There the cats had their own guestroom. His collection of cats in Cuba began with a Persian he originally named Tester. He renamed her Princessa, because she was so graceful and elegant. He rescued another kitten from the Cuban village Cojimar, who was eventually known as Boise or Boy. At one time he and Martha had as many as fifty-seven cats. In a letter to his first wife, Hadley, Hemingway wrote, "One cat just leads to another . . . the place is so damned big it doesn't really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time..." He also wrote about teaching one of the cats to drink whiskey and milk with him. Even with the companionship of all those cats, he confessed to feelings of loneliness and sadness which he felt throughout his life.

This mood is echoed in his novel, Islands in the Stream (published posthumously in 1970). The protagonist, Thomas Hudson finds some comfort from talking to his cats after his sons die in a car accident. Cats make appearances in other stories. Some literary critics say he used cats to flesh out his stories and characters. For instance, in his short story, "The Cat in the Rain," the cat found cowering under a table in the rain symbolizes the wife's feelings of being drowned out by her husband's lack of affection and apathy.

Even after his death in 1961, cats continued living and breeding at his former home in Key West. The house on Whitehead Street was turned into a museum, and the curators continued Hemingway's tradition of naming the cats after famous authors and movie actors. But in 2003 the Hemingway museum was spotlighted in the news. The Federal government had threatened to fine the museum two hundred dollars a day per cat (which amounted to about $10,000 a day) because it didn't have the proper animal exhibition license. Yet the museum didn't qualify for the license, because the cats were not kept in an enclosed area. The battle between the USDA and the museum continued until 2007. The museum president, Michael Morawski and a deputy from the USDA came to an agreement. Morawski hired animal behaviorist, Dr. Terry Curtis, to make recommendations. He concluded that the cats were well cared for and recommended the installation of a "cat proof" fence around the property. The lawsuit cost the museum over $250,000.

At present there are around sixty cats at the Hemingway museum. Their care is privately funded, and a veterinarian administers yearly shots to each cat. Most of the cats are neutered. The original cat fountain is still on the property. Visitors to the museum are advised against picking up the cats, but there is no discouraging Charlie Chaplin or Lady Brett Ashley from jumping into your lap if you rest on a bench. And sadly, no, none of the cats are up for adoption.

References

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner 1964)

Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917-1961. Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner 1984)

The Hemingway Home Museum http://www.hemingwayhome.com