Walking in Papa’s shadows: My Spring Break adventure visiting Hemingway’s six-toed cats

Growing up, Ernest ‘Papa’ Hemingway was required reading in my house.
I think my old man shoved “In Our Time,” Hemingway’s first collection of short stories, into my hands when I was twelve or thirteen.
Like Hemingway, my dad is a writer and newspaperman. Also like Papa, my old man likes to trout fish, hunt and partake in healthy cocktail hours.
Like my old man, I am a writer and newspaperman. I also like to trout fish, hunt and am no stranger to the joy juice.
As a youngster, I was enthralled with Hem’s stories like “Indian Camp” and, of course, “Big Two-Hearted River.” Not only were they great pieces of writing, but they took place in Northern Michigan settings I was familiar with. I probably read the “Big Two-Hearted River” sitting on the banks of the Fox River in the Upper Peninsula, the river Nick Adams is actually described fishing in the story. We fly-fished it often then. Hemingway changed the name to the other nearby river because it sounded more romantic.
I would have done the same.
I went on to read nearly all his books as I grew up. Now, I’m starting to re-read them.
Hemingway’s known as this big, macho manly man who blew his head off with a shotgun, which isn’t exactly being graceful under pressure. And, while I may not be as dazzled by his work now as I was when I was 12 (it doesn’t have much of a sense of humor), I can still read something like the novella “The Old Man and the Sea” and admire it for its slim aesthetic beauty and what it seems to say about strength and will.
While living in Chicago, I visited his childhood home in suburban Oak Park, but with the knowledge that he thought of it as a town with “wide lawns and narrow minds.”
It should come as no surprise that a trip to Hemingway’s house in Key West, where I was vacationing over Spring Break last week, was a pretty heady experience.
Key West is where he chose to live from 1931 until 1939, when he was in his thirties, around the same age I am now.
The house is marvelous: two stories tall wrapped with green porches and shrouded in palm trees. It takes up a lot more ground than all of the surrounding houses.
There’s a swimming pool where movie stars swam and a brick fence surrounding the entire property because of the parties the Hemingways would throw. Legend has it a peephole was left in the brick fence in case anyone wanted to sneak a peek at potential skinny dippers.
There is the writing room where Hemingway wrote “A Farewell to Arms,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
There is the urinal he copped from the local tavern he frequented, Sloppy Joe’s, and turned into a drinking fountain for his cats.
Six-toed cats. They were everywhere.
Hemingway was given one of the polydactyl cats by a ship captain. Currently, some of the sixty cats who prowl around Hemingway’s estate are direct descendants of that feline.
I know all this because I, of course, took the $13 tour.
My wife, her parents and I got there early. We were staying down the street and knew how busy Hemingway’s house got in the afternoon.
I wondered out loud, much to the annoyance of everyone I was with, about why all these people, hundreds of them, who had probably never read a sentence of Hemingway would want to see his digs.
I was trying to feel some sort of spiritual connection at just another stop on a list of tourist attractions for some of these other yahoos.
There was one guy in particular who stuck out during the tour. Literally. He must have been seven feet tall. Or I might be stretching it to make the story better. Maybe he was only six and a half feet tall.
Anyway, our tour group of about 20 went through the house with a guide. When we got to the bedroom, one of the six-toed cats came off the balcony and jumped onto the bed where Hemingway laid his haunted head at night. The bed was roped off and the guide joked that only the cats were allowed behind them.
“But, please,” he said, “do not try and pick up any of the cats. You can pet them, but do not pick them up.”
The cat laid on Hemingway’s bed and started licking himself.
The tall dude bent over and started petting it.
The cat did not like this. It showed its teeth and swiped its paw.
The tall dude giggled. He didn’t get the hint. He tried petting it again.
The cat hissed.
“Sir, I think it might be best to not touch the cat. He doesn’t like it,” the guide finally said.
I’m hoping it was Hemingway’s ghost.
I definitely felt Papa’s presence in the house and I’m glad I braved the tourists to feel it.
Afterward, I called my dad and told him all about it.