#catsims

Biology

They’re not cat/human hybrids or some kind of magical experiment, they’re taxonomically just cats. More specifically they’re a species of felid that evolved to fill an ecological niche usually occupied by hominids the same way hyenas are felids that fill a niche usually occupied by canids. Form followed function and now there’s sapient cat people.

Consequently, like most felids, they have five digits on their forelimbs/arms and four on their hind limbs/legs. Their claws are not retractable because evolution sacrificed that for the extra dexterity of two finger joints and better balance while walking upright.

Their coat genetics work very similarly to domestic cats but with a few curveballs and genes unique to them. Some genes crop up more commonly in particular regions with extremely obvious/predictable distribution, so you'll see a lot of colorpoints in Mt Komorebi, a lot of tiger striped agouti in Tomorang, and a lot of bengal agouti and solids in Evergreen. How did this happen without deliberate color breeding? Don't worry about it they're pretty.

They slot more cleanly into felinae than panthera and can purr but not roar. They don’t meow because talking technically is their meow. Closest relatives would probably be cheetahs or other small wildcats.

They’re more omnivorous than most felines and benefit from eating a fruit now and then but they do still primarily eat meat and can’t subsist on a vegetarian diet. because they’re more omnivorous, most of them can taste sweetness. 

They can’t naturally interbreed with humans or anything else besides Sixam aliens, but I mean it’s the sims and science babies are a thing so in practice it’s probably doable. The tech probably originates from the aliens.

(sidenote, I view Sixam aliens as kind of the citrus trees of kingdom animalia. in that they’ll get down with anything that passes the harkness test and can produce viable hybrid offspring with a staggering number of other species, and are generally kind of biological chameleons)

They mostly don’t find it weird that people keep domestic cats as pets for the same reason humans mostly don’t find it weird that people keep monkeys as pets. I mean, don’t keep a monkey as a pet, but you see what I’m saying. if there was a species of domesticated monkey it would be fine. 

They’re naturally predisposed toward magic and have a higher than average percentage of spellcasters among them. they aren’t more gifted at magic than other species, on average, there are just a lot of them that have some aptitude. 

They don’t have a ton of sexual dimorphism, both males and females can range from very small/slight to very tall/bulky and anywhere in between. 

The main difference is that males generally have much fuller/longer manes (it’s more common to keep them long in Evergreen Harbor, but in other regions they often cut/style them shorter according to broader fashion trends) and females generally grow them much shorter and sometimes don’t have one at all.

They don't have eyebrows. Because there's already fur there.

NSFW Biology

They have very small breasts on average unless actively pregnant/nursing and if the game supported it better, they wouldn’t have them at all most of the time. Because I’m tired of slapping boobs on every humanoid species even when it makes no real sense to do so. You really just don’t see cat people walking around with humungous dobonhonkeros and they don’t sexualize them in the same way some human cultures do.

Their dicks aren’t barbed because Ow, but they do have vestigial non-keratinous bumps that make them look like they are. While they do have a sheath rather than a foreskin they don’t actually retract into it by more than a couple inches when soft. 

Social

As a species they’re very predisposed toward polyamory and less inclined to marry or stay with one partner their entire lives, as with most cats. Their family structures tend to be less fixed and more convoluted than the traditional human idea of a nuclear family as a result, with most kittens being raised communally by varied combinations of partents/aunts and uncles/friends. this makes them somewhat frustrating to manage within the framework of sims 4 gameplay. 

They’re promiscuous by human standards and have fewer hangups about nudity. As a consequence they tend to be fetishized/perceived a certain way by other species. Some find this deeply frustrating and some just kinda shrug and lean into it. Or utilize it to make a killing as escorts/cam models because hey the market is there. 

Look, the fact that I regularly make content for wickedwhims should tell you what my priorities are, in any given save of mine San Myshuno is a den of cyberpunk debauchery and everybody's fucking like maniacs. There's some porn logic going on here.

Relationship to the world

They aren’t really native to whatever plane of existence the sims world is in. Originally their species came from another world and entered the one they inhabit now via the magic realm. The population that immigrated was later cut off from their world of origin (or the world itself may have fallen to some sort of calamity, they have no way of knowing at this point) but were able to integrate into their new home pretty successfully. That was many generations ago and the kind of thing the current population reads about in history books, and has absolutely no bearing on anything. but for some reason I needed to know this. and now all of you have to know this. 

They have, however, always been seen as outsiders by the human population and the mindset has persisted to varying degrees throughout history, even though nobody alive today would possibly remember a time when they weren’t around. 

Because of this history, they’re well known for moving into abandoned places and/or ghost towns formerly occupied by humans and making them their own, the most recent example being Evergreen Harbor, which currently has by far the largest population of cat people relative to other species. They’re largely self-governed due to the nature of the place (though they do put in the effort to actually govern themselves, this isn’t a New Hampshire bear town situation) and their work in restoring the area has begun to attract environmental scientists and activists of other species to the town.