Kitty Ice Prints...

...or icy kitty prints?

I'm not much of a cat blogger, but I saw paw prints in the making the day before yesterday, when a couple kitties jumped up on the jeep right after it had been washed, leaving dusty prints all over the hood! The kitties were, apparently, interested in drinking water from the bowl-like indentations where the windshield wipers swivel, because all other water that afternoon was in the form of snow and ice.

The next morning, after an ice fog had partly lifted, the hood of my jeep looked like this:

Frozen cat prints on jeep hood.

Enlarged prints.

More prints.

More enlarged prints.

Little ice crystals comprise the frozen prints.

As Jim Lehane recently noted, ice is the solid, crystalline form of water. Ice crystals are hexagonal; the ones on my jeep were too small to examine without my hand lens — and I didn't stay outside long enough in the icy morning air for that!

Ice at Mindat.org
Ice at Webmineral.com
Is Water a Mineral? -- Is Ice a Mineral?