while traveling around the american fiatlandia, i had the pleasure of visiting Earnest Hemingway's house in Key West, Florida, near the southern-most tip of US, 90 miles away from Cuba. there he wrote 500-700 words daily until noon. for the rest of the day he enjoyed boxing, hunting, fishing, as well as the company of his amazing cats.
The history books say that Hemingway was gifted a white six-toed kitten by a local mariner, Captain Stanley Dexter, after Hemingway had admired the captain’s own six-toed feline, Snowball, at a local watering hole in 1935.
the property had 59 cats at the time of my visit. everyone but two of the cats was neutered. there is a tiny cemetery of their predecessors, where the longest living-cat was 22 years old according to the dates on the tombstone.
“all of the cats carry the polydactyl gene, only about 70% show it with the extra toes,” but the Hemingway cats with four and five toes can still have six-toed kittens."
Polydactyly is an autosomal dominant trait, meaning that a polydactyl gene inherited from one parent is sufficient for a kitten to develop extra toes, but the gene does not always express itself in the offspring.
although these cats are known as the 6-toed cats, they are actually polydactyls or multi-toed; apparently polydactyls can have up to 9 toes.
Non-polydactyl cats typically have a total of 18 toes, with five toes on each front paw and four toes on each hind paw.
the cats were everywhere around the property! the staff prefers that the visitors do not pick up any cats or take them home, so i could not verify who definitely has 6 toes (5 forward facing and one back-facing), but i think i saw at least one with 6 toes when it was walking. additionally, i took a photo of a cement walk and there is at least one print of a paw with 5 front-facing toes (and presumably 1 back-facing toe that usually does not imprint).