What the paw prints emoji 🐾 means
🐾 is the PAW PRINTS emoji, added in Unicode 6.0 in 2010. It shows a pair of animal paw prints and is the go-to symbol for pet lovers, dog and cat accounts, animal shelters, vets, groomers and sports teams with an animal mascot.
It also works as a trail or a divider: a row of 🐾 suggests an animal walking across your post. Do not confuse it with 👣, which shows human footprints.
Text paws with ฅ
If you want a paw that matches your text color, use ฅ. It is an obsolete Thai letter called kho khon, and its shape looks like a raised paw. That is why cat faces such as ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ put it on both sides: the cat is holding up its paws.
Because ฅ is a letter, it also works in places that block emoji, such as some usernames and game names.
Paw print borders for bios and posts
Mix 🐾 with dots, stars or lines to frame adoption posts, pet Instagram bios and Discord channel names. A simple "🐾 adopt, don't shop 🐾" line or a ⋆ 🐾 ⋆ 🐾 ⋆ border keeps the theme without clutter.
On a pet account, a paw before the name, like "🐾 Luna, 3-year-old rescue", makes the bio easy to scan. Find more borders on the divider symbols page, and animal faces on the cat symbol and dog symbol pages.
How to type the paw prints emoji
On a phone, open the emoji keyboard and search for "paw". On Windows press Win + ., on a Mac press Control + Command + Space, then type paw. In HTML you can write 🐾, and the text paw ฅ is easiest to copy from this page.