- The scene is set: a hotel where two Americans are staying. The opening paragraph describes how the view from the window of the couple's room looks out over the public gardens, a war monument and the sea.
- It's raining cats and dogs (well, at least cats, as we come to find) and the scene of the dripping palms, empty square, and regular waves on the beach make everything feel sort of monotonous and abandoned.
- From the window, the American wife notices a cat crouching underneath a table in the square, "trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on" (2).
- The wife tells her husband, who is reading on the bed, that she's going to go down and bring it in.
- He offers to get it for her, but she declines and he goes back to reading, telling her not to get wet.
- The wife goes downstairs and finds herself in the presence of the hotel keeper or "padrone," a large, older man who stands up from his desk and bows to the wife as she approaches. She has likes this guy for some reason. We know this because of how she "likes" his hands, his dignity, his face, his seriousness and "the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper" (11).
- When she opens the door, the hotel maid appears behind her with an umbrella and follows her into the rain. When the wife doesn't find the cat under the table, the maid notices her disappointment and asks what's wrong…all in a nice mix of Italian and English phrases.
- The maid is a little skeptical at the thought of a "gatto" hanging out in the rainy square, but the wife only affirms that she saw it and that she "wanted it so much" (20).
- The two women go back into the hotel and as the wife passes the padrone's office, he bows to her again.
- Hemingway describes the strange but wonderful feeling that the gives the girl: "very small and tight … very small and at the same time really important" (24).
- When the wife comes back the hotel room, her husband, George, is still reading on the bed and asks if she found the cat.
- She sits in front of a mirror, looks at her profile, and asks if she would look better with long hair. Her husband replies no, and she begins to talk about the things she feels she wants—a cat, long hair that she can feel and twist, her own candles and silver, and for it to be spring outside.
- The husband tells her to shut up and she pulls back to a simple desire for a cat.
- As the room grows darker, there's a knock at the door. It's the maid, and she's holding a cat—a gift for the "Signora" from the padrone.