The theme of feeling lonely in the crowd permeates the story “Cat in the Rain,” by Ernest Hemingway. In this story, an American family is staying at a hotel in Italy. The American woman sees a cat in the rain and wants to rescue it, but the cat runs away before she can take it. The woman feels disappointed not only by the fact that the cat ran away, but also about her life. Suddenly, the maid knocks at the door of their room and brings a cat, but not the one the woman wanted. The story is written in 1925. The opening paragraph of the story serves as an exposition, it describes the setting very vividly. It was raining and the war monument that was near the hotel ‘glistened in the rain’. The image of a war monument creates the mood of the story and contributes to our understanding of it. The action takes place after the World War I and the main characters belong to the so-called ‘lost generation’. The protagonist of the story is the American wife. Her appearance is not described, but we can infer what we need from her actions. She likes the owner of the hotel very much for showing his respect for her. “The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked the way he wanted to serve her.” That indicates that she wanted to feel like a woman, wanted to be taken care of, and the hotel owner was the only person around her at that time who made her feel like that. She felt lonely and insecure, that’s why she wanted to save the cat that was in the rain. “The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on” – this quotation creates an image of a poor kitty that is trying to find shelter from the rain. Such an image arouses sympathy in every woman. The fact that Hemingway calls the cat ‘she’ proves that he personifies it, compares it to the lonely American woman. This personification serves as foreshadowing, the cat is just like that woman, only with the difference that cats can’t wear masks, conceal their emotions, reassure themselves that everything is alright and nothing is to be changed. The contrast between the American woman and the maid, who acts like the one who found the woman