Pawprint Stamping

Let's say you're a fuzzy little critter living in a world full of Civilized Animals. For the most part, you live as average humans do, at least to your animal limitations. But there's one thing that becomes a tad bit difficult if you're an animal — leaving a signature. So, what do you do? The answer lies literally in your hands!

A trademark of most mammals are paws. They range in size and depend on the breed, but they're usually round, distinct and pointy, and show very well that an animal has been there. They're often treated the same way as fingerprints (which is Truth in Television — pawprints and noseprints are unique to cats and dogs).

If the animal has hooves, expect hoofprints. If it's a bird, expect them to use their feet.

Basically, this trope is about animals using their anatomy as a way to signify their presence, and to remind the viewer that they're an animal. Consider this the descriptive image form of Furry Reminder.

Very common amongst the Funny Animal.

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Examples

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles: Whenever Bolt attends a book signing with Penny in these stories, the dog "autographs" items by inking his paw and leaving a print on a glossy photo or book. Described in "The Imaginary Letters" and "The Paris Trip."
• In the Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure fanfic A Whole Latte Love by Gullfriend31, the Healin' Good PreCures and the Healing Animals work on a Mother's Day card for Queen Teatinu. Latte the puppy dips her paw in pink paint and leaves a paw print on the paper to leave a signature.

Films — Animated

• Animalympics: In place of the human Olympics' golden rings, four small and one large ring make a pawprint for the Animalympics; the narrator explains that the pawprint is a symbol of world peace 'Through animal athletics'.
• At the end of Brother Bear, Kenai leaves his pawprint on the tribe's cave wall — but everyone does that, since they're a prehistoric people who haven't invented writing. The unusual part is him doing it as a bear rather than a human.
• Snoopy, Come Home: Snoopy endorses a letter protesting a new "No Dogs Allowed" policy at the beach by stamping it with his pawprint.
• Tweety's High Flying Adventure involves Tweety flying around the Earth in eighty days to settle a bet between Granny and Colonel Rimfire. En route, Tweety must collect the pawprints from eighty different cats. If Tweety succeeds, a municipal park will be funded by Colonel Rimfire. Tweety gets a goodly number of pawprints in Venice, Italy, as several cats try to climb out of the canals they'd fallen into.

Literature

• Animal Farm: When Snowball the pig takes over the farm, he instills a new flag that consists of a hoof and a horn.
• Making Money: Mr Fusspot is a mongrel, but his late owner loved him very much, and leaves him 50% of the shares in the Ankh Morpork bank — giving him a total of 51% and making him the bank's chairman. Ownership of Mr Fusspot, meanwhile, is given to Moist von Lipwig. When Moist launches his new paper money idea, he stamps Mr Fusspot's paw-prints on the notes to make them official
• Sam Pig: When Sam sees an inkpot and some paper, he dips his hoof in the ink and makes a hoofprint as a signature.
• Winnie the Pooh: In the final story, Tigger's signature, rendered in the text as "BLOT", is just a pawprint.

Live-Action TV

• Blackadder: In "Witchsmeller Pursuivant" in the first series, Edmund's horse Black Satin appears in the witness box at Edmund's trial, and later, a written witness statement from Black Satin is produced, bearing a hoof mark signature.
• Wishbone: Wishbone's primary dog actor, Soccer, happened to have some markings on his left ear that looked a bit like a pawprint. At a certain point, they started applying vegetable dye to his ear to make it look more like a pawprint. On the actual show, it's kind of a toss-up whether the ear will have a visible pawprint at any given time, but regardless, he always has the pawprint ear in marketing materials.
  • In "Fleabitten Bargain", Wishbone as Faust uses a pawprint to sign (in blood!) his Deal with the Devil.
  • In "The Pawloined Paper", the replica of the purloined letter has only a pawprint inside of it.
  • In "The Prince and the Pooch", Prince Edward Tudor and Tom Canty (both played by Wishbone) are ultimately distinguished by asking them to draw the Royal Seal. The incorrect version is a giant pawprint.
  • In "Barking at Buddha", Sun Wukong (again, Wishbone) stamps a giant pawprint on the mountains at the edge of the Earth (or rather, Buddha's finger).

Video Games

• In Final Fantasy XIV, Anden lacks opposable thumbs due to being transformed into a leafman a century ago. This means he has to sign all of his Custom Delivery documents with one of his leaves dipped in ink for a stamp. After being restored to his true form as a Viis, he starts signing his deliveries in the Vrandtic script.
• Shin Megami Tensei: One of the summonable personas in-game is a little black cat named Neko Shogun. It dresses as a samurai, and it's outfit includes a red flag with a black pawprint on it.

Western Animation

• Blue's Clues: In each episode, Blue, the titular blue puppy plays the eponymous game by putting her paw prints on three different items for Steve (later Joe and Josh) to write down in his handy-dandy notebook and deduce what it is she wants when he sits down in the Thinking Chair. Blue indicates she wants to play it by putting her paw print on the screen too. Blue's pawprints have ink-like properties, are semi-sentient, can change their form, and can temporarily animate the objects they touch.
  • Blue's Clues & You! reveals that this is not a peculiarity exclusive to Blue and that all magical puppies (Like Magenta and Rainbow Puppy) are also capable of placing pawprints in the same way as Blue.
• In FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman, the theme song explains how Ruff started his show. He put his pawprint on a contract.
  "They got my contract back to find/ To their surprise a dog had signed!"
• Gabby’s Dollhouse: Each one of the Gabby's cats has their own distinctive pawprint as a personal symbol
  • Pandy has a hot pink heart with 3 circles on top.
  • CatRat has a short downwards triangle with 3 long upwards triangles on top.
  • MerCat has a teal seashell with 3 stars on top.
  • DJ Catnip has a purple CD/disc with a play button, a pause button symbol, and a stop button symbol on top
  • Carlita has a large black pawprint with two straight lines at the ends and two irregular lines in the center to simulate a tire mark.
  • Pillow Cat has a pink circle and three purple buttons to simulate smaller fingers.
  • Cakey has a large pink sprinkle and three fingers made of cyan, blue and purple drops that are described as sticky.
  • Baby Box has a large rectangle and three smaller squares, all made of pink paper.
  • Kitty Fairy has a flower in the middle with three ovals above it.
• Krypto the Superdog: When Kevin meets Ace the Bat-Hound in Ruffled Feathers, he asks for an autograph. Ace notes that he can't sign his name, so he compensates by giving him a batarang with his pawprint on it. This batarang would end up being used to get rid of the kryptonite weakening Krypto and allow them to escape the death trap they're in.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Hoofprints are used as signatures in Equestria.
  • In "Wonderbolts Academy," Spitfire autographs a stack of photos by stamping them with her hoofprint.
  • In "Spice Up Your Life," famous food critic Zesty Gourmand gives a three-hoofprint rating to any restaurant she approves of, which in practice means any restaurant with the small servings and bland flavors she likes.
• Martha Speaks: In "Starstruck Martha", Carlo the dog gives out "paw-tographs", which are pawprints on pieces of paper.
• In the Rankin-Bass special The Mouse on the Mayflower, Willum Mouse uses his pawprints to sign the Mayflower Compact.
• The Pink Panther: In The Pink Panther short "Pink Da Vinci", the titular panther spots an artist painting the Mona Lisa, but with a horrid scowl on her face. The Pink Panther takes it upon himself to replace the frown with a smile. Following some back-and-forth with da Vinci, the smile remains, along with a discreet pin pawprint next to the artist's signature.
• Samurai Jack: The series' third episode sees Jack working to defend some anthropomorphic dog archaeologists from insect robots sent by Aku. As he is preparing a battle standard by drawing his sigil on it, they accidentally walk over it, leaving pawprints on the canvas. Jack leaves them as is as a sign of their cooperation.
• You're (Not) Elected, Charlie Brown: Snoopy infiltrates the school as Joe Cool and is asked to solve an equation on the board. After looking at it, he just puts his pawprint as an answer. This gives him away and is thrown out.

Real Life

• There exists a 15th-century manuscript from Dubrovnik, Croatia, that has the pawprints of a cat stained on the pages.
• While they're not animals, the bear sub-culture of the LGBT community uses a flag with a bear pawprint on it.
• One British canine officer wrote a report on behalf of police dog Peach (signing it with the dog's paw) since "PD Peach" was repeatedly demanded to provide a witness statement after it was explained he's a dog.
  I Chase Him
  I Bite Him
  Bad Man
  He Tasty
  Good Boy
  Good Boy Peach
• In 1975, physicist and mathematician Jack Hetherington wrote a paper and was about to publish it, but his colleagues pointed out that he had written it referring to "we" instead of "I." He didn't want to retype the article or bring in another author, so he made his cat Chester the co-author. When he sent copies of the article to his friends and colleagues, he put Chester's pawprint on them as a signature.

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