Hemingway’s Six-Toed Cats Ride Out Hurricane Irma in Key West<br />After that, he said, “hopefully, things will get back to normal in Key West and we’ll enjoy our life in paradise.”<br />Though she is not involved in the operations of the house,<br />and was not even sure how to get in touch with Ms. Sands as Irma approached, Ms. Hemingway said she had been “horribly nervous for everybody.”<br />Live, updated maps showing where the storm has made landfall and how much of the state has been hit by tropical-storm- and hurricane-force winds.<br />But now that the storm has passed and all the denizens of the house are safe, she said in an interview on Monday, “I think it’s great<br />that they cared enough to try to really protect all things Hemingway.<br />The 54 cats, many of them descendants of a white polydactyl cat owned by Ernest Hemingway,<br />live at the writer’s house in Key West, Fla., which was hit hard by Hurricane Irma.<br />They remodeled the house, which was in a state of disrepair, filled its rooms with European antiques<br />and Hemingway’s big-game hunting trophies, and spent $20,000 building the first in-ground pool in Key West.<br />The cats, she said, would come inside when the barometric pressure dropped,<br />and they and their human attendants would be safe within the 18-inch-thick limestone walls of the house.
