My family went to visit our grandfather in "the old country". He lived out in the countryside in a beautiful old 700 y.o. building that had been a barn at some point.
In the back of the house was an ancient wooden door that led into a "mud" room where you would take off your muddy clothes before coming into the main house. It had a perfectly smooth, perfectly round hole about the size of a person's head, about 6" above the bottom of the door.
I asked him what that hole was for. He said, "the cats made that! They scratch at the door to be let out at night". Well, I was confused. This door was almost 8" thick oak, and he had only 1 fat lazy cat. It would've taken that cat forever to claw through that wood!
Then he explained that cats had been scratching at that spot for centuries to be let out. Each generation of cat would slowly scratch away a little bit of the door. Then, when the hole had finally been big enough for a kitten to get through, generations of kittens had gone through it and worn the hole smoother, and bigger, until bigger cats could get through, then they had worn it bigger and smoother still.
That blew me away. Untold thousands of cats over the course of centuries!
starstarstar42 on September 7th, 2019 at 19:49 UTC »
My family went to visit our grandfather in "the old country". He lived out in the countryside in a beautiful old 700 y.o. building that had been a barn at some point.
In the back of the house was an ancient wooden door that led into a "mud" room where you would take off your muddy clothes before coming into the main house. It had a perfectly smooth, perfectly round hole about the size of a person's head, about 6" above the bottom of the door.
I asked him what that hole was for. He said, "the cats made that! They scratch at the door to be let out at night". Well, I was confused. This door was almost 8" thick oak, and he had only 1 fat lazy cat. It would've taken that cat forever to claw through that wood!
Then he explained that cats had been scratching at that spot for centuries to be let out. Each generation of cat would slowly scratch away a little bit of the door. Then, when the hole had finally been big enough for a kitten to get through, generations of kittens had gone through it and worn the hole smoother, and bigger, until bigger cats could get through, then they had worn it bigger and smoother still.
That blew me away. Untold thousands of cats over the course of centuries!
Hodgepodge75 on September 7th, 2019 at 19:51 UTC »
This weathering pattern is literally a bell curve.
ManBierPig on September 7th, 2019 at 20:21 UTC »
I want to see the bell