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Hemingway's Cats: Revised Cuba Edition - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Hemingway's Cats: Revised Cuba Edition

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Ernest Hemingway always had cats as companions, from the ones he adored as a child in Illinois and Michigan, to the more than 30 he had as an adult in Paris, Key West, Cuba, and Idaho. All are chronicled and most are pictured here, along with revelations about how they fit into the many twists and turns of his life and loves. In 1943, Ernest Hemingway, living in the Finca in Cuba with his third wife and eleven cats, wrote to his first wife: "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" who soaked up love in return for comfort and companionship. He gave each a name that suited its character, including F. Puss, Fatso, Friendless, Feather Kitty, Princessa, Furhouse, Uncle Woofer, and his last cat in Idaho, Big Boy Peterson. In this updated and edition, you'll also meet his nine dogs, a cow, and a young great horned owl that he rescued not long before his death.

Hemingway's Cats reveals a softer side to the writer's character than is usually portrayed through the macho image of the hunter and fisherman. He sought the cats' comfort in times of stress and loneliness, and he featured some of them in his writings, particularly in A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and True at First Light—all written late in his life and as close to autobiography as he ever came.

ISBN-13: 9781561649624

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers - Inc.

Publication Date: 02-01-2017

Pages: 224

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

Carlene Fredericka Brennen, long a newspaper editor and publisher in southwest Florida, spent over 30 years researching Hemingway's life in Key West, Bimini, and Cuba. She co-wrote Hemingway in Cuba with Hilary Hemingway and worked on the award-winning documentary film by the same name. She coordinated the International Hemingway Festival on Sanibel Island and the First Annual Hemingway Flats Fishing Tournament on Captiva Island in 1997. She has also recently co-written two books with Randy Wayne White, a Gulf Coast cookbook and a book about tarpon fishing. She lives in Fort Myers, Florida, with her husband and a good many cats.

Table of Contents

Foreword Hilary Hemingway xi

Author's Note xiii

1 The Early Cat Years 1

2 Cats at Walloon Lake 5

3 Love and War 9

4 The First Mrs. Hemingway 13

5 Too Poor to Own a Cat 15

6 Paris and Feather Puss 19

7 A Feather Kitty Never Dies 23

8 The Isle of Cats 27

9 Key West-The Cats Next Door 33

10 Not a Cat Fancier 39

11 The Stray Cats of Finca Vigia 45

12 Hemingway's Dearest Cat Friends 47

13 Negrita Finds a Home 57

14 The Circus Cats 65

15 No Cats on the Pilar 69

16 A Wildcat in Bed 79

17 Mary Welsh and the Cats' Tower 81

18 Miss Kitty of the Wild West 91

19 Never Punish a Cat 95

20 Finding Black Dog 99

21 The Cat Wars 107

22 Pets, Guns, and the Pulitzer Prize 111

23 African Wildlife and Two Airplane Crashes 117

24 The Passing of Negrita and the Nobel Prize 125

25 Boise Remembered 127

26 The Next Household Cat Prince 133

27 The Deaths of Black Dog and Machakos 135

28 Two Cats and an Owl 139

29 "Your Big Kitten" in Cuba and Spain 147

30 Without His Cats 151

31 "Good Night, My Kitten" 155

32 Fidel Castro and the Last of the Finca Cats 159

The Cast of Cats 165

The Cast of Dogs 173

Other Animals 176

Acknowledgments 177

Bibliography 182

Photo Credits 189

Permissions 190

Index 194