Question for you American Lit. experts - particularly Hemingway

[n2ize]

And that says something different, that the cat symbolizes the "wife who longs to be loved." "wife who longs to be loved" is not quite the same as "a cat", is it? The question is about how that Prof. "knew" the cat was a baby.

I'm with 'BSO on this one when he said...

Perhaps that is the reason he was the professor and you were the student. Perhaps he has done more research ? The correct way to approach this would be to propose a more obvious meaning for the cat in the rain and justify that proposition. For example, what do you think it represents and how might that be more closely related to the story.