“Cat in the Rain” (1925)

A lot of people have made a lot of things out of this very short story by Ernest Hemingway. Wikipedia uses it to talk about an “iceberg theory” of literature, in which a story shows the 10% that’s above the surface while also somehow suggesting the 90% of it hidden below. This story works pretty well that way, in spite of being obviously another one of Hemingway’s marriages / wives. It’s raining, and the woman, the wife of the American couple at the Italian hotel, sees a kitten outside their hotel crouched under a table and wants it for the companionship. So much depends upon it,  But it is elusive. At story’s end a maid knocks on their door with a cat in arms for her. Others see the story as related to wanting or having children. That’s fair. Another theme discussed is that she’s lonely because her husband (Hemingway) abandons her to his writing every day for hours and she doesn’t have anything to do. He is somewhat neglectful. Sadly, that sounds the most like Hemingway to me and thus the most plausible interpretation. I like it best as literally about a cat in the rain who is rescued, as we say now. A cat that has found its forever home with a woman or couple who will always take care of it. Never mind that Hemingway and this particular wife, Hadley, lost all or most of his literary work to that point when a suitcase went missing. Now a somewhat overblown legend, it does remind that literally lost writing can be debilitating. I have my own examples from the early days of word processing, when hours of work could be lost by accidentally pressing the wrong key. This story may be a little too typical of Hemingway in some ways (the stoic writer at his poetic work) but I just stubbornly like the cat story and that’s all there is to it. I won’t hear of it any other way. I suspect I may sound dismissive of Hemingway’s imagist impulses, but they do generally work and that includes this story very much. (The preface paragraph, on the other hand, is another bullfighting scene. Again, works well. Again, I'm not interested in bullfighting.) The cat scenes are better than the marriage scenes, but overall it’s another good Hemingway story by all the usual rules of judgment.

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
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