"And Hamish’s delightful phrase about excreting bricks is probably a pretty fair description of how ACS is going to react when Theisman starts bringing two or three hundred Republican podnoughts through the Junction!”
Please forgive the aside.
In reading ART, I discover Alfred Harrington's treecat name is Deep Roots.
Names given to persons by their treecats always hold a certain fascination to me, especially when considering some of the people.
I just can't help wondering what a treecat's name would be for me.
That terrifies me almost as much as an irate cat.
Oh come on, nicknames have a tendency to stick you know.
My fiancee says it would be lamebrain.
My niece thinks that is hysterical.
Art brings to my attention the peripheral communication between treecats and people who sign in company of other people.
"It’s just—”
“Just that you’re human,” Elizabeth said quietly. Honor looked at her, and the empress shrugged, stroking Ariel’s ears as he lay across her lap. “I can read sign, too, you know. And I know you both well enough to follow the subtext.” She smiled sadly. “You’re not the only person who’s been hit hard enough to be a little illogical, either. Sometimes I think the smarter we are, the better we are at finding ways to hammer ourselves with imagined disasters ahead of time.”
Of course there has been rampant treecat signing since Dr. Aref's success, but this incident thrusts the phenomena deeply into my mind that it is happening in full-on social settings.
Most likely it is because the third person looking on is the Queen herself, as a spectator of Honor's conversation between her and her cat.
This is leading to my curiosity as to how it will be handled in the movie.
There are discussions as to how the
empathic abilities will be handled, but I also wonder how much signing will be used.
My sister's deceased husband's sister's sixteen year-old daughter is deaf. She and my niece are very good friends and they sign like crazy. I can understand some basic phrases and words. Simple stuff. My signing usually leaves the poor girl scratching her head.
But its ok, because she reads lips and I take the easy way out when I communicate with her. She speaks well. I am amazed at the lip reading ability that she accomplishes from across the room???
I constantly test her. Even when I am not actually speaking but whispering the words, not only does it not matter, but she knows that I am whispering???! Incredible!!!