literary chick
It is a myth that Hemingway loved cats. What he actually loved were chicks.
Here is the true story: In 1935, the great writer befriended a sea captain who was docked in Key West. This sea captain had a six-toed pet hen called Chiclet, and a rooster called Rupert, both of which he gifted to his host in thanks for three nights of drunken hospitality while the captain waited out a storm that prevented him from returning to sea. Smitten with his new feathered friends, Papa realized he needed a proper chicken coop. Soon, the Hemingway House in Key West was home to the most famous chicken coop in the world. And no wonder: The top of the coop was made from the hull of Papa’s old fishing boat, Pilar, and the door was constructed from the actual door of his favorite Parisian cafe, The Closerie des Lilas.
(Yes, it is a chicken coop, and not a drinking fountain for cats made from a urinal that is photographed most by tourists who visit the writer’s famous home.)
The chicken coop served its purpose. Before long, there were chicks underfoot, and chicks on the dining room table, and chicks lined up on the sink in the tiny bathroom where Papa shaved each morning, reciting into the foggy mirror, whatever dialogue he had written the day before. And of course, there were chicks climbing all over the typewriter that sat on the desk in the great man’s bedroom. Indeed, in a 1958 interview with George Plimpton in The Paris Review, when Hemingway revealed that he had “hunted and pecked” his way through thirty-nine re-writes of A Farewell to Arms, he wasn’t kidding. He meant it. Literally.
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