Hemingway’s Florida Home and His Precious Polydactyl Cats

The softer side of the famous author — a Photo Story

The above print is a reproduction of Hemingway’s photograph that hangs in his house on Florida’s Key West Island. The original was created by the noted Canadian portrait photographer, Yousuf Karsh in 1957. The portrait is held (not currently on view) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Hemingway lived in this house between 1931 to 1939. During that time, he wintered in Florida and spent the rest of the year traveling all over America. But he held the title to the house until his death in 1961.

After Hemingway’s death, the sons sold the property to Bernice Dixon, who owned a jewelry store on the island. She briefly resided at the house but eventually turned it into a museum to honor the writer’s memory.

The Hemingway House is now one of Key West’s chief tourist attractions.

The house has wide balconies that invite you to stroll along while ocean breezes tease with their salty tang.

Or you can stand at the ornamental railings and take in the wealth of flower and leaf in the gardens below. This is the only picture I found in my archives.

The ribbon grass, crotons, and ixora in the photo represent a small portion of the garden’s bounty. The grounds are home to an impressive collection of tropical plants such as palmettos, ferns, hibiscus, coleus, and the scarlet cascades of heliconia.

This is Hemingway’s study — complete with his typewriter. I wish I had zoomed in on the contents of his bookshelf.

Here, Hemingway wrote two of his best-known short stories including the semi-autobiographical “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” He also wrote his novel To Have and Have Not, and a non-fiction book Green Hills of Africa.

This is Hemingway’s bed, currently occupied by the pampered descendants of his precious cats.

Polydactyl Cats —

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” Earnest Hemingway

Hemingway House is famous for its cats. There are currently between 40 to 50 felines in the house. They are a legacy of, and testament to, the author’s love for his “purr factories,” as he dubbed them.

In 1935 (so the story goes), Hemingway met a ship’s captain at a bar in Key West. The pair got drunk, and the captain offered his bar buddy “a multi-toed cat off his ship.”

The cat was named Snow White (or “Snowball” by some accounts) and had six toes — instead of the usual five — on its front paws. This condition — in which cats have extra toes on their front or back paws — is known as polydactyly.

These felines are also known as ‘Mitten kittens.” The extra digits make it appear as if the cat is wearing mittens.

Back then, cats were regulars on ship journeys. Sailors took cats on board to protect their food stores against the depredations of rats and mice.

Polydactyl cats were prized for their oversized paws, which made them good mousers. And extra toes helped the cats balance when the seas turned rough.

The ship’s captain must have thought highly enough of Hemingway to gift him one of his precious mousers.

About half the cats on the Hemingway property are polydactyl. Some are descendants of Snow White.

Hemingway named his cats after famous people: Pablo Picasso, Sophia Loren, Charlie Chaplin, and so forth. The tradition carries forward with Gina Lollobrigida, Rudolph Valentino, and Tennessee Williams.

Here a cat, there a cat—

There are cats everywhere in Hemingway House. Lounging on beds —

Sunning themselves in the yard.

Curling up on sofas in the study —

Having extra toes is not detrimental to a cat’s health. But it does disqualify the feline from entering cat shows or competitions.

I don’t know that Hemingway would have cared about his purr factories winning competitions.

If you are a cat parent, would you?

Thanks for visiting! 🌼🌸

Giving a shoutout to some stories I enjoyed reading:

I love flowers so I really liked this piece by Terry Day. Great pics of his garden too.

And here’s Victoria Gregg’s piece with the intriguing title: Snow in The Desert:

Here’s one of my short writerly stories:

And here’s one about those magical creatures — Bees.

Yana Bostongirl, Thank you for publishing my story! 🌷