Friday 15 September 2017

Six-Toed 'Hemingway Cats' Survive Hurricane Irma

By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer | September 11, 2017 06:01pm ET
More than four dozen cats that live at Ernest Hemingway's historic home in Key West, Florida, survived Hurricane Irma unharmed.
All 54 cats, and the 10 people who stayed with them during the storm, are safe, David Gonzales, a curator at the house, told MSNBC on Sunday (Sept. 10). Gonzales and his colleagues took the cats inside the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum, which has 18-inch-thick limestone walls, according to the New York Times.
The "Hemingway cats" are famous not only for occupying the historic home and lounging on its grounds, but also for having six toes. (Cats usually have five front toes and four back toes, according to the Museum.) The extra digit is an inherited trait, resulting from the "polydactyl gene." All of the cats carry this gene, but only about half display the trait, the Museum said. Many of the cats are decedents of Hemingway's cat called Snow White, which also had six toes.

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