The Hemingway Cats

At the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida, around sixty cats roam the grounds — and roughly half of them have an extra toe or two. The story goes that a ship's captain gave the writer a white polydactyl ('many-toed') cat named Snow White, and the unusual trait has been passed down through dozens of generations ever since. Polydactyly is a harmless genetic quirk that gives the cats wide, mitten-like paws, and sailors once prized such cats as good luck and superior mousers aboard ship. Today the Hemingway cats are a protected colony: many are named after famous people in keeping with a tradition Hemingway began, they receive regular veterinary care, and they enjoy the run of the author's former home and gardens. They have become one of Key West's most famous attractions — and even the subject of a long-running legal dispute over whether the museum's cat colony falls under federal animal-exhibition regulation.