Ernest Hemingway? Leicester Hemingway? Elizabeth Hamilton? Lois L. Vine? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: The following statement appeared as a crossword puzzle clue in “The New York Times”:
Human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a ___ does not.
This statement was attributed to Ernest Hemingway, and the missing word was “cat”. But I am skeptical that Hemingway ever wrote or said this. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1961 Leicester Hemingway published “My Brother, Ernest Hemingway”. Ernest used the nickname “Baron” when referring to his brother Leicester. The remark about cats was ascribed to Ernest Hemingway by Leicester Hemingway. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Much has been written about Ernest’s enormous fondness for cats. He claimed they were superior to people of unknown quality. “A cat has absolute emotional honesty, Baron,” he told me once. “Male or female, a cat will show you how it feels about you. People hide their feelings for various reasons, but cats never do.”
The accuracy of the quotation is dependent on the veracity of Leicester Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway died in 1961, the same year Leicester published the book about Ernest.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1978 veterinarian Lois L. Vine published “Common Sense Book of Complete Cat Care” which included the following slightly altered version of the quotation as an epigraph:2
A cat has absolute honesty. Male or female, a cat will show you how it feels about you. People hide their feelings for various reasons but cats never do.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY
In 1979 Elizabeth Hamilton published “In Celebration of Cats”. The book contained a version of the saying with “human beings” instead of “people”:3
In his home on the top of a hill in Havana Ernest Hemingway had thirty cats. But more interesting than numbers was his attitude to them. A cat, he said, had ‘absolute emotional honesty’: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. And since most of us have to admit, if we are sincere, that we like approval, this honesty on the part of the cat can put us at his mercy.
In July 1993 “The Post-Crescent” newspaper of Appleton, Wisconsin printed an instance fo the quotation:4
Cats do a lot of nice things for us and with us but not to please us. It pleases them. One has to respect that. It’s straightforward. Ernest Hemingway said it: “A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings but a cat does not.”
In November 1993 “The Guardian” newspaper of London printed a phrase attributed to Hemingway:5
Ernest Hemingway had 30 cats in his Havana house and 50 in his Florida home. The reason he kept so many was his great appreciation of their “absolute emotional honesty”.
In 2000 “The News-Journal” of Daytona Beach, Florida printed the following:6
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty. Human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” — Ernest Hemingway.
In conclusion, in 1961 Leicester Hemingway published a book about his brother Ernest Hemingway. Leicester claimed that he heard the quotation about cats directly from Ernest. The quotation is accurate if Leicester’s memory is accurate, and his truthfulness is legitimate.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Jonathan Caws-Elwitt whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. The clue appeared in a crossword puzzle from “The New York Times” on March 18, 2026.
Image Notes: Picture of cats in a basket from Jari Hytönen at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
- 1961 Copyright, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway by Leicester Hemingway, Chapter 11, Quote Page 278, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1978, Common Sense Book of Complete Cat Care by Lois L. Vine D.V.M., Part One: The Life Cycle of a Cat, (Epigraph), Page 0, William Morrow and Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1979 Copyright, In Celebration of Cats by Elizabeth Hamilton, Chapter 3: The writer and his cat, Quote Page 52, David & Charles, London, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1993 July 17, The Post-Crescent, Section: Weekend, More of us have cat companions by Catherine Corgi (Special to The Post-Crescent), Quote Page 15, Column 5, Appleton, Wisconsin. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1993 November 5, The Guardian, Feline facts, Section 2, Quote Page 3, Column 3, London, England. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 2000 July 13, The News-Journal, More readers favor stopping the cropping by Mary Motley, Quote Page 2C, Column 6, Daytona Beach, Florida. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎