Of Cats and Men by Sam Kalda

Author:Sam Kalda [Kalda, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2017-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

WRITER

Ernest Hemingway is popularly depicted as the archetypal macho writer. While he certainly embodied the most flamboyant features of masculinity—guns, booze, women, and big game hunting—Hemingway had a much softer side. Entombed within his great barrel chest was a cat man of epic proportions.

A member of the so-called Lost Generation (a term coined by writer Gertrude Stein), Hemingway moved to Paris as a journalist after World War I and joined a circle of literary expatriates, including Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce. Despite his connection to the urbane literati of Paris, Hemingway is most often associated with rugged adventure. His love of hunting, fishing, and bullfighting led him around the world, eventually owning homes in Key West, Florida, as well as Wyoming and Cuba.

While living in Key West, Hemingway was given a cat by a ship’s captain. Snow White was a six-toed feline, the first of Hemingway’s famous brood of polydactyl cats in Key West. Polydactyls are born with extra fingers and toes. For a human, this can be the addition of a digit or two. For cats, however, the math is much more impressive. The world record for extra cat toes belongs to Tiger, a twenty-seven-toed marvel.

As Papa Ernest not so famously said, “One cat just leads to another.” In the case of our feline comrades, eighteen toes just lead to another nine. Hemingway’s cats—or “purr factories” and “love sponges,” as he was fond of calling them—reveal a softer, more nuanced portrait of Papa.

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