Ernest
Hemingway, despite his manly bravado, had a soft spot for cats. By 1945, he had
amassed 23 of them. His niece writes in the foreword to Hemingway’s Cats: An
Illustrated Biography that the author and his fourth wife, Mary, called the
cats “purr factories” and “love sponges. On February 22, 1953, one of
Hemingway’s cats, Uncle Willie, was hit by a car. Following the accident,
Hemingway sent his close friend Gianfranco Ivancich the following distraught
and stirring letter, originally featured here last year:
Dear Gianfranco:
Just after I finished writing you and was
putting the letter in the envelope Mary came down from the Torre and said,
‘Something terrible has happened to Willie.’ I went out and found Willie with
both his right legs broken: one at the hip, the other below the knee. A car
must have run over him or somebody hit him with a club. He had come all the way
home on the two feet of one side. It was a multiple compound fracture with much
dirt in the wound and fragments protruding. But he purred and seemed sure that
I could fix it.
I had René get a bowl of milk for him and
René held him and caressed him and Willie was drinking the milk while I shot
him through the head. I don’t think he could have suffered and the nerves had
been crushed so his legs had not begun to really hurt. Monstruo wished to shoot
him for me, but I could not delegate the responsibility or leave a chance of
Will knowing anybody was killing him…
Have had to shoot people but never anyone I
knew and loved for eleven years. Nor anyone that purred with two broken
legs.
