Cat paw prints in the medieval floor tiles of the 12th century CE St Peter Church in Wormleighton, England
You know what I love about this? There is a 0% chance that this is an accident.
Those beans met that clay when it was soft. The tilemaker saw several paw prints in his work, lightly splayed in that "ready for business" pose. Heck, maybe he helped the cat make them. And then he fired that tile with them in there. It'd be the work of a minute to remake the tile fresh at that point, and they chose not to.
But then, we have another craftsman, laying tiles in his new local church. Perhaps he finds this delight in his tiles for the day, but perhaps his good friend John Tilemaker comes over to him with glee and shows him the special tile that his Gyb helped him make.
And William the Tiler takes this bean-blessed tile in his hands, and he knows that it is good. So it becomes part of the floor of his church. But look closer. He laid this just to one side, by a walkway but not in it. Visible, but a little bit less likely to be worn away.
That joy of multiple people making active decisions that yes, this cat's paw prints are good, and should live forever. And for eight centuries, that cat's legacy has gone on.
what's more likely, a conspiracy between church goers and tilemakers resulting in a long string of deliberate and specific actions or that there was a very heavy cat.
