 a detail lifted from telegrams  exchanged between the two that were auctioned off after  Katharine Hepburn (qv)s death in 2003, in which they address each  other by those names. In the movie, Howard calls Kate "country  mouse", and she calls him "city mouse." This is incorrect: Howard  was the country mouse (living in suburban Los Angeles) while Kate  was the city mouse (a regular in New York).