“Oh, you mean the house with all the cats.”

“Oh, you mean the house with all the cats.”

Holy cow. It’s been way too long since I clicked “new post” on the old blog dashboard.

So many posts began in my head, so few (like zero) on paper.

But that’s about to change darn it and there’s no better way to get that blogging inertia rolling down hill like a once-in-a-lifetime writer.

Hemingway.

I guess when you reach name recognition with one word you are either internationally infamous or genius. Probably both.

I spent last weekend in Key West to run a half marathon. Hopefully, I’ll post about the race in a few days for you runners but I first want to write about our visit to Hemingway’s Key West house. The three of us — my husband, son and myself — all agreed it was a highlight of the trip.

Yes, there it is with our nice tour guide to the left. Much of what is written in this post is from his tour. He was great (and I hope truthful). The young lad entertained with wonderful stories. He really was good. I say this in spite of the FSU Seminole t-shirt that he wore under his uniform.

What did I learn about Ernest Hemingway? This is what I remember.

He was incredibly handsome. He had dark hair, dark eyes and a dark stature. Okay. He was tall. Passions ruled his relationships (four wives), his hobbies (large game hunting and fishing), his drinking and his writing.

And the cats!

I was so busy snapping photos of the feline celebs and texting them to my cat-crazy daughter that I forgot to look for their mythical six toes.

They all had wonderful names, but the only one I seem to remember is this gal who rules Hemingway’s bed.

Betty Grable. This is her spot and she isn’t shy about protecting her throne from other newbie kitties.

The nice-for-a-Seminole tour guide told us that the first kitty of Hemingway House is attributed to this white ball of fluff in this boy’s arms. These were Hemingway’s sons from his second wife Pauline and it was her uncle that gave them this house.

I took a photo of this photo when I learned that this was the first kitten and of its name.

Snowball.

See I had a Snowball as my first kitty. Or Snowy as she became known to us. Maybe it is something about growing up in Florida that crawls out of the deep subconscious to call feline white balls of fluff Snowball.

Snow. That mythical frozen magic that children in the Great White North get to experience.

Yes. I kept taking pictures of cats and sending them to my daughter.

This fellow was sunning himself out by the pool. Which was the first pool in Key West.

The building is not only a pool house. The upstairs was Hemingway’s studio. One that was connected by a cat walk to his bedroom.

We learned that he started writing at 7 a.m. and called it off at five to stroll up to Sloppy Joe’s.

The typewriter. How amazing is that?

This was my favorite kitty. She/he was lying in a window right off this room.

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

The first sentence in The Old Man and the Sea. He wrote this in Cuba — but the old man is modeled after a longtime Key West friend and fishing buddy.

A marlin.

I’m embarrassed to say, I’m halfway through my first reading of this classic and I always had the fish pictured as some great whale. What can I say? I might be simple-minded but I am always honest with you my dear reader.

And unfortunately I think I have the ending figured out after hearing one word from my husband’s lips talking about the story with my son — who read it on the plane coming home.

I was in a waiting room for an hour this afternoon and began reading.

As I read Hemingway’s words the room’s nondescript cream-colored walls disappeared.

I sat in a boat with oars dipping into the salt water and heard the lapping — slap, slap slap — of water on its wooden side. The heat of the sun warmed my back and sweat rolled down my chin. Ick.

The stinging weight of rope lay across my shoulders and burned my hands.

The water ran clear and deep indigo. And the rope slanted away at a 45 degree angle into the depths silently pulling the boat farther and farther from Havana.

Who can do that?

Write things that transport us to another reality without the aid of a helmet pumping a 3D virtual reality into our minds and senses.

A master with words.

Picasso gave Pauline this sculpture.  The real one must be in some museum but how cool to have a Picasso kitty in the house of cats.

Hemingway was a man of Pulitzer Prize writing talent who traveled the world. Took lovers and married the ones he decided to marry.

He wrote and drank and fished.

Then he took his own life at age 61. The woman in front of me during the tour gasped when she heard this.

It was such an idyllic setting. It was hard to imagine the depths of depression he must have experienced.

I took this goofy selfie not so much of me but of this lush greenery off the veranda off the 10-foot open doors of his bedroom.

Not a bad spot to nap.

Not a bad spot to write.

Have you read Hemingway? If so, do you have a favorite?