The main reason for my visit to Key West was the Hemingway Home and Museum where Ernest Hemingway lived in his 30s (which happened to coincide with THE thirties, 1931-1939).
To get to the Hemingway home, turn off Duval Street at the Elvis-shaped Robusto cigar outside the Robusto Bar.
So excited! It’s unusual for a Key West home to be surrounded by a brick wall. Apparently during the depression, Key West authorities tried to boost tourism by pointing out famous people’s homes. Hemingway didn’t appreciate gawkers, so he used bricks from the recently de-bricked streets to build a wall around his property.
You’ll notice the sign for the Hemingway home says “no credit cards.” I haven’t carried cash in probably two decades at this point. And I was already on the plane by the time I realized I’d need cash for the museum. My debit card was in a bag that was in another bag that was safely back at the Airbnb. Oh no. The whole point of the trip was the Hemingway home! Maybe I can visit my bank’s Key West branch and get cash that way? Nope, it’s Saturday, and they don’t open until Monday. Can I talk my way into the museum? I doubt it. Few things on this adventure have tripped me up as often as the cash culture in the east … you’d think that I’d learn and start carrying some emergency cash. But no. I flew to Key West to see a thing that required cash for admission. With no cash. And no way to get cash.

So I googled it. Apparently the pandemic has ushered in the advent of contactless ATM machines. So IF you have a bank that participates, and IF your phone has the technology, and IF you can find an ATM with a contactless reader, then you can get cash without a physical debit card. My bank participates! I logged into the mobile banking app, added a digital debit card to my phone’s wallet, enabled the phone’s contactless technology, and hoped that my bank’s one ATM on the island would be contactless. And it was! I can’t believe that worked. (As a side note, the contactless ATMs aren’t really contactless since you still have to press buttons and/or touch the screen to complete your transaction, but for those who forgot their debit card they’re technological marvels.)
They let me into the museum! (The man at the ticket booth did not seem like the type to forgive you for showing up with anything other than cash, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to talk my way in.)
The reason I needed to visit this particular Hemingway home is the six-toed cats. While on the island, Hemingway became friends with shipwreck and salvage captain Harold Stanley Dexter. Captain Dexter owned a six-toed cat named Snowball, and he gave one of Snowball’s kittens to Hemingway’s kids. The kids named the kitten Snow White (because the movie had just come out). Snowball and Snow White’s descendants are still hanging around the Hemingway home!
When I was there they had 58 cats, about half of them with the extra toe beans. (But all carrying the gene for extra toes, so a regular-toed cat can have kittens with extra toes.) The tour guide said it’s easier to learn the cat names than you might think because the adults sleep in the same place every day. (For example, Mata Hari always sleeps in the roof gutters of the writing studio.)
They keep two male cats, and they let each female cat have one litter before they get her fixed. There were some teenaged cats hanging out by the pool. They were so friendly! They don’t seem to mind being constantly petted.
The cat kennels look like the main house with yellow shutters and green trim. There was also a cat cemetery where you can see the names of past cats (Bubba, Gremlin, Mr. Betty Davis).
More than one concrete slab had paw prints in it.
When Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer divorced in 1940, she got the house. (Her uncle was the one who bought it for them.) But when she passed away at age 55, she hadn’t updated her will, and the house went back to Hemingway.
When he died, a family friend purchased the house at auction. She used it as her primary home for a while and then turned it into the Hemingway Home & Museum.
The museum is still run by her family (who do things like give home tours).
Hemingway spent a lot of time drinking at Sloppy Joe’s bar in town. On the way home he’d look for the lighthouse so he could figure out where he was.
Hemingway also took one of the urinals from Sloppy Joe’s (supposedly as a memento when the bar was going to be refurbished). His thinking was that he’d pissed away so much money there that he was justified in taking the urinal.
There’s also a rumor that he added the urinal to his yard piss off Pfeiffer, to get back at her for the pool. When they first moved to the house, Hemingway looked at the spacious yard and thought it’d be a great place for a boxing ring. But when he returned from his time as a Spanish Civil War correspondent, Pfeiffer had replaced his boxing ring with a pool. (Or so the tour guide said. The Hemingway Home website points out that Hemingway was actually the one who’d planned the pool, and Pfeiffer oversaw its construction while he was away.)

The pool was an extravagance. It cost $20,000 (significantly more than the house), was the first in Key West, and was the only in-ground pool for 100 miles. Workers had to dig the 60-foot-long hole through solid coral. Plus, the pool went in at a time when fresh water was scarce on the island. So they drilled down to the salt water table and pumped salt water into the pool. Salt water only stays fresh for a couple days, so the pool had to be emptied frequently and the multiple-day cleaning and pumping process repeated.
Hemingway (supposedly) became so angry at the pool’s rising costs that he fished a penny out of his pocket, tossed it to Pfeiffer, and said she may as well take him for every last cent. She paved the penny into the patio by the pool, and it’s still there for visitors to look at.
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