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Did you know that Hemingway was a cat person?
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While the popular myth of Papa Hemingway surrounds the writer with lions and other big game, smaller felines played a larger role in the writer’s later life. By 1945, he had 23 cats, who were “treated as royalty,” according to "Hemingway’s Cats", which was published in 2006. Hemingway and his fourth wife Mary called the cats “purr factories” and “love sponges.” The descendants of those cats continue to live at the old Hemingway house (a fence was erected for them after a neighbor’s complaint led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture). Because many of Hemingway’s cats were of the six-toed variety, “Hemingway cat” has become a colloquial term for polydactyl felines.
-- David Haglund at Slate.com
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While the popular myth of Papa Hemingway surrounds the writer with lions and other big game, smaller felines played a larger role in the writer’s later life. By 1945, he had 23 cats, who were “treated as royalty,” according to "Hemingway’s Cats", which was published in 2006. Hemingway and his fourth wife Mary called the cats “purr factories” and “love sponges.” The descendants of those cats continue to live at the old Hemingway house (a fence was erected for them after a neighbor’s complaint led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture). Because many of Hemingway’s cats were of the six-toed variety, “Hemingway cat” has become a colloquial term for polydactyl felines.
-- David Haglund at Slate.com
