Hemingway's Cats

Hemingway’s Cats explores the life of Ernest Hemingway, the women he loved, and the cats and dogs he befriended throughout his life. His animals often helped him to cope with his failing relationships, deep-seated loneliness, and life-threatening diseases. This intriguing book, filled with photographs, helps us understand Hemingway the man, the lover, the husband, the father, the hunter, the fisherman, the writer, as well as the devoted master of many cats and dogs. You will discover a kinder, gentler man known only to family and close friends, quite different from the macho character he himself helped to create—a man part fact, part fiction. When you hear of Hemingway and Key West, you immediately imagine a yardful of six-toed cats. Key West was not the only town known for Hemingway cats. In Cuba, Hemingway had fifty-seven cats and five dogs roaming the grounds of his hilltop home. He once wrote in a letter from there: “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 called the cats “purr factories” and “love sponges” that soaked up love and in return gave them comfort and companionship.