fixation station

sorry anon, I think it's pretty reasonable for people to read a cartoon catgirl with medium-light brown skin as a woman of color. I know I'm not going to convince you here – I have particular unpopular hills I'm willing to die on too. But I can kinda see where you're coming from.

There is indeed a history of creators giving their characters of color animal traits or turning them into animals for a chunk of the story, which is a known racist trope. I know this isn't your argument but imo, spop doesn't fall into this trope because there are plenty of human characters of color (Glimmer, Bow, Mermista, etc.) in the main cast to balance out the two racially ambiguous animal-person members (one of Scorpia's moms appears to have been Asian). The animal traits also aren't used to dehumanize Catra or Scorpia; e.g. portray them as a mystical other or somehow closer to nature or limited in reason. They're just people who happen to have those traits.

However, if I'm to take your view that Catra is white, or perhaps that human conceptions of race don't apply to her because her skin color is actually cat fur, I can see the offense. Taking an animal-person and assuming them to be a person of color simply because of the implicit association between animals and people of color would in fact, be racist.

But, because we are humans living in a human world with human understanding of race, people seeing her:

a character with a notably brown skin tone, and thinking that she's a woman of color, or would at least be considered as such if she were teleported onto Earth, is not a baseless or racist assumption.

also, it's a common fandom thing to jokingly say Catra is literally a cat, but it's essential we all know she's not. Catra is a person with animal traits, not "a literal fucking animal."