Whistling. What is it? It is, at its most basic, the act of pushing air through one’s lips to produce a sound. Most people have done it. Some people do it well. Others do not. Why do they do it? No one can say for certain, and frankly, I’m not sure anyone has ever bothered to ask.
I was reflecting on this subject yesterday morning while seated in my favorite chair in the barn apartment, which, I should note, was renovated entirely through the Klingenschoen Fund and is therefore a legitimate community asset for tax purposes. Koko was perched on the dictionary stand, staring at the letter W with an intensity that can only be described as deliberate. Yum Yum sat on my lap, kneading my knee in what I interpreted as Morse code. Coincidence? My moustache says otherwise.
It was at that precise moment — my moustache bristling with a familiar, electric urgency — that I heard whistling outside. A man was walking down the lane, whistling. Just walking and whistling, as though Pickax were not a community that has endured fourteen arsons, nine murders, and a suspicious cheese-related poisoning in the last eighteen months. Who whistles in a town like that? Someone with nothing to hide, or someone with everything to hide? I made a note to mention it to Chief Brodie, casually, at the coffee shop, where I would allow him to pick up the check, as he has a steadier income.
Koko immediately leaped to the windowsill and uttered a single, piercing “YOW.” This, I have come to understand over many years, is not merely a vocalization. It is an indictment. The last time Koko yowled at a whistler, that man turned out to be embezzling from the Pickax Goodwill Knitting Circle. I am not saying I had anything to do with his subsequent arrest, though I was present at every critical juncture, which some might find statistically remarkable.
Do cats whistle? They do not. Is this because they are above it? Almost certainly. Koko communicates through silence, through the flick of a tail, through the strategic knocking of books from shelves. He has never needed something so crude as whistling. Neither, for that matter, have I. But someone is stealing my birdseed again, and I suspect the whistler knows something about it.
Whistling.
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