<P> "Cat in the Rain" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961), first published by Boni & Liveright in 1925 in the short story collection In Our Time . The story is about an American man and wife on vacation in Italy . Critical attention focuses chiefly on its autobiographical elements and on Hemingway's "theory of omission" (iceberg theory). </P> <P> According to the book Hemingway's Cats, Hemingway wrote the story as a tribute to his wife Hadley . The couple had only been married a few years, and lived in Paris where she was left alone for hours at a time while her husband worked . She asked for a cat but he told her they were too poor . When she became pregnant he wrote "Cat in the Rain", apparently based on an incident in Rapallo (where they visited Ezra Pound in 1923). Hadley found a stray kitten and said, "I want a cat...I want a cat . I want a cat now . If I can't have long hair or any fun I can have a cat ." </P>

Where does cat in the rain take place