(no subject)

[which_chick]

Some things piss me off more than normal people understand. One of these things is Penn State Nittany Lion paw decals for one's auto.



See, the thing is that the fucking decals have five toes. Here's a sample of what the fuck I'm talking about in case you don't live in or near Pennsylvania. Now, the Nittany Lion (the school mascot for Penn State) isn't actually a real critter, though there's a nice statue of one on campus. Best that I can tell, there ain't any normal (The polydactyl gene makes cats have more toes but I'm talking about typical members of the genus Felis, not fucking mutants. If you're a fan of mitten cats, fine. I won't have them in my house. They look icky.) cat-type critters with five fucking toes. My two housecats, who contributed to this article by sitting quietly while I mauled their feet and counted their toes, have four toes on each foot and a dewclaw on each front foot. The dewclaw doesn't leave tracks and would not be visible on a paw print decal in the unlikely event that they ever wind up with careers mascotting for some benighted land grant university. The situation is the same for larger cats -- judging from the size of the lion statue, the Nittany Lion is rather bigger than a housecat. It looks like a mountain lion (Felis concolor), a critter that was once more-or-less native to Pennsylvania. Mountain lions also have four-and-dewclaw on the front and plain-four on the back. Should you doubt me, here is a nice selection of real feline paw prints, all of which show FOUR FUCKING TOES.

Interestingly, some offically licensed Penn State merchandise has acceptable paw prints. See here for an example. (This image was screenshotted from lions-pride.com, who would not LET me link to an internal page. Fuck 'em if they want to be like that. Assholes.)

I want people claiming to be alumni of the school to know how many fucking toes cats have. I want the people making car decals to have looked at a fucking cat's foot. It's not like the mascot is a two-toed sloth or a bandicoot or some fucking obscure critter that the graphic artist would have trouble locating a footprint image for. I want random Pennsylvanians to stop driving around in front of me with anatomically incorrect paw print stickers on their fucking cars.

Comments

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

Heh. I like how that site also shows you what a badger's footprint looks like. You're just about as likely to run into one of those as an African lion, I guess, but it's still funny to see it. Seems fairly random.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

I was told that the four-toed catspaw print is trademarked to another school with a big-cat mascot. I can't find any online links that would illustrate the point, sorry.