• Full Title: Cat in the Rain
• Author: Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
• Language: English
• Written Date: 1923 - 25
• First Published: 1925 (in the short story collection “In Our Time”) ✪✪✪
• Genre: Modernist Short Story
• Form: Short Fiction (symbolic, psychological, and minimalist narrative)
• Type of Work: Psychological and symbolic domestic story centered on loneliness and unfulfilled desires
• Period: Modernist Period / Lost Generation Literature
• Narrative Style: Simple, direct, objective style; third-person limited point of view focusing mainly on the American wife
• Tone: Quiet, tense, lonely, symbolic, emotionally restrained
• Climax: The American wife expresses her deep emotional longing and frustration. She confesses her desires for comfort, identity, and love, symbolized by her repeated wish for “a cat.”
• Famous Line: “I want a cat. I want a cat now.”
• One-Line Summary: A lonely American wife in a rainy Italian town wants a cat, symbolizing her deep need for love and emotional care.
• Point of View: Third-person limited (focused almost entirely on the American wife’s thoughts and emotions)
• Setting
• Time Setting: Early 1920s, after World War I; a time of emotional dislocation for the “Lost Generation.”
• Place Setting: A hotel in a small Italian coastal town; the setting includes the hotel room, the rainy garden, the square, and the war monument.

Key Notes – English

Cat in the Rain: Cat in the Rain is a famous short story by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1925 in his book In Our Time. The story centers on an American couple staying in a small coastal hotel in an Italian town. Set in an atmosphere of rain, silence, and loneliness, the story explores emotional tension in human relationships, neglect, the sense of isolation in a foreign place, and personal desires. The central symbol of the story is the “cat in the rain,” which represents the wife’s deep emotional emptiness, her need for affection, and her longing for a stable sense of identity. In this story, Hemingway uses his characteristic simple language, minimal dialogue, and symbolic presentation to portray the woman’s inner conflict and the quiet distance between husband and wife.