Tropical Zen

Today’s Trick: Opposable Thumbs

Take your thumb and rub it lightly back and forth across the second segment of your fingers to make a whispering noise-”tssa, tssa, tss”. It’s distinct enough that that noise, repeated a few times, is enough to prevent a startled (and possibly violent) response when someone touches me unexpectedly.

Over the years, it’s come to mean many things — among them affection, care, respect, for fears and needs and space.  It also often means that petting is about to happen. This all started many years ago when I first had Sputnik the surly black cat. That boy shed like he was being paid by the by the strand–short black cat hairs floating gently everywhere with each pet. As I’d pet him I’d rub some of the fur off my fingers in the above-described fashion (tssa, tssa, tss) and he quickly associated that noise with affection, so whenever I wanted to touch him I’d make that noise. If he was sleeping, I could make the finger-whispering noise and he’d keep drowsing as I pet him (instead of attacking, which he often did in his kittenhood).

I don’t know exactly when it became a thing to do with humans, but I most strongly associate it with my kid. Like me, she startled easily and could be angry and very frightened when caught unawares. “Heightened startle response,” they call it. I also tend to pay close attention to certain familiar voices and sounds so I can pick them out from the undifferentiated din of public places, but it’s still often a game of “guess what they actually said.” We used the finger-whisper enough that even my hard-of-hearing ears could pick the noise out of the background, a vital thing when I need to hear something/someone.

Sometimes, the noise was a shortcut to whispering, “I love you.” (tssa, tssa, tss.)

I’ve since trained other animals to the sound; they pick up pretty quickly what it means. With an animal’s keen sense of hearing, they can often hear the signal from much further away than a human could, so it works pretty well as a “come here for something you like” call.  I wonder –who trained whom?

Sigh. I really miss my kid right now.