With revenue down due to a lack of international visitors, the Florida home that once housed Ernest Hemingway is struggling to stay afloat. Most of the staff at the home, now a museum, have been laid off due to Covid-19. However, the six-toed mutant cats that live in the house still attract locals.
After Hemingway died in 1961, the house became one of the top tourist attractions in Key West. Residents had endured severe hurricanes and economic downturns, but were unprepared for the Covid-19 pandemic that has devastated tourism.
Covid-19 has kept foreign visitors away from the museum, leaving only domestic visitors, but the number has also dropped as the pandemic rages in Florida. Thirty of the museum's 45 staff have been laid off in recent months. "I used to have more than 10 guides, now I have four," said Andrew Morawski, the museum's director. Those who remain continue to work, guiding visitors and caring for a litter of six-toed mutant cats, descendants of a cat Hemingway owned decades ago. "We still plan to open the museum and make sure the cats are well cared for," Morawski said.
Visitors are now even more interested in the cats than in the life of the author who wrote the work.The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, "isn't taught as much in schools anymore, especially in America," the museum director said. So "the cats seem to hold a little more interest," he said.
Writer Hemingway used to own many cats, including the six-toed cat Snowball.
It's always hot in Key West. Sweat beaded on visitors' faces as a guide recounted the life of the writer and his wife, Pauline, while another museum employee poured ice into the cat's water bowl.
"Oh so cute," the guests exclaimed.
Key West is the end point of a chain of Florida coral islands that stretches 107 miles off the southern tip of the state and is connected by 42 bridges. “It used to be so crowded you could barely get through the crowds, and now it’s empty,” said Jack Reichenback, a 67-year-old local who lost his job during the pandemic and was trying to sell a watercolor of a beach scene. “It’s really bad.”
For the first time in years, tourists didn't have to push through crowds or line up to take photos in front of the landmark that marks the southernmost point of the United States. Among those waiting to watch the sunset was Carol D, a 65-year-old New Yorker who returns to Key West regularly. When asked if she had ever been to Hemingway's house, Carol said she didn't know about it, but enthusiastically recommended it. "You have to see the cat house. They're amazing," Carol said.
