As a young cat lover, my favorite book was Socks by Beverly Cleary. The gray tabby of the Bricker family was aptly named as his paws were indeed socked in white fur. Ever since then, I’ve gravitated toward cats with white paws. Ok, honestly, I gravitate to all cats, but since I read the tale of the socked tabby cat, white-pawed kitties have had my heart.
And it seems there’s an explanation for a cat lover’s fondness of cats with white paws. The reason stems back 10,000 years ago to when cats and humans began their coexistence, a timeline supported by Driscoll et al.’s 2007 genetic study in Science.
White paws are a coat pattern trait, known as piebald or white spotting, not a breed. No major registry, including CFA or TICA, defines a breed by “socks” alone; the trait shows up across purebreds and mixed breed cats alike.
Leslie Lyons, professor emerita and head of the Feline Genetics Laboratory at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine, said, “As humans became farmers and started staying in one place, they had grain stores and refuse piles” and with grain storage and garbage came rodents.
The wild cats that roamed about settling civilizations ate these grain gobblers. People decided these rat-catchers would make great companions, just like the dogs who’d found their wild beginnings too. As wild cats domesticated into kitty dears, certain traits grew more and more prevalent through the ages, according to Lyons. White paws were one such characteristic.
Ancient Cat Lovers Were Silly for Socked Paws Too
White paws were not often seen in the wild cats of old as the Felis silvestris was designed to blend in with surroundings. The small predator used camouflage to survive and hunt, the same skill set that shows up in today’s most accomplished hunting breeds. But, as Lyons reports, “Genetic mutations are occurring all the time.”
So bright, white feet wouldn’t help a feline on the hunt stay hidden.
However, it seems cat lovers of long ago found cats in socks just as cute as we do today.
“There were probably people saying, ‘I particularly like that kitten because it has white feet. Let’s make sure it survives,'” said Lyons.
Sounds about right!
Lyons also points out the calmest animals were probably selected over cats remaining too wild in their behavior. And for some reason yet unknown to science, “white spots tend to appear when the tamest individuals are selected and bred”. Several species of animals domesticated by humankind exhibit this correlation of calm behavior and white feet as well, a pattern documented in Trut’s 1999 farm-fox domestication study.
So, let’s pay attention to our cats in socks. Are they calmer than their dark-pawed counterparts?
How Do Cats Get Their White “Socks”?
Genetics is a technical game, but the short version is this: cats get white paws when certain pigment cells stop spreading before they reach the feet while the kitten is still developing in the womb.
Lyons explains that the neural crest cells responsible for color in cat fur start out in the region that becomes a kitten’s back. From there they travel across the body to give feline coats their patched, striped, or solid fur. If these cells don’t move far enough down the legs, the kitten ends up with white paws, a finding traced to the KIT gene region in Cooper et al.’s 2006 study in Animal Genetics.
Next time you’re planting kisses on your cat’s socked paws, you can explain how those cute white toes trace back to a long ago ancestor who found a forever home thanks to a pair of white gloved feet.