Sense of Touch

How is it that the human hand is so perfectly designed to play with kittens?  You stalk your fingers deliberately across the floor and he crouches, revving up his hind legs for the pounce.  You roll him over and tickle his belly while he grabs you around the wrist with his forepaws and tries to kick your fingers away with his hind feet.  You scoot your hand quickly out from behind a table leg and back again, and he gives chase in a perfect feline ring-around-the-rosy.  Or you slide your hand under the bedclothes and suddenly poke up a finger and he comes hopping sideways across the blanket, back arched, tail fluffed up, to attack.  But best of all, is swooping him up into your lap where, with the softest stroking of your index finger across his tiny forehead, he falls instantly to sleep.

© 2015, Sandra Shaw Homer

Photo by Marten Jager

Photo by Marten Jager

About SSH

Philadelphia native and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell, Shaw Homer has lived in Costa Rica for over 30 years, where she has taught languages and worked for environmental NGOs. In addition to writing for the local press, her fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared in both print and on-line literary and travel journals, as well as on her blog, writingfromtheheart.net. Her travel memoir, Letters from the Pacific, received excellent Kirkus and Publishers Weekly reviews. Her most recent book is Evelio’s Garden: Memoir of a Naturalist in Costa Rica. She and all her books can be found at www.sandrahomer.com.

2 thoughts on “Sense of Touch

  1. Katherine Masis says:

    There’s a book on how the hand shaped human history: Frank Wilson, *The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture.* Link to amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Hand-Shapes-Language-Culture/dp/0679740473

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