Tabaxi

Created by the absentee God who calls Himself the Cat Lord, Tabaxi are a relatively rare and extremely feline-like people that have been scattered to all corners of the continent with no central community or a civilization to point to as their origin. They do not have their own language, though often speak the predominant second language of the province they originated from. Their appearance is highly variable.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Humanoids that resemble cats to a great degree, tabaxi are completely furred, stand on two legs, and have 5 fingers and 4 toes + a dewclaw. Their ears stand upright but may be rounded or triangular and vary in size. The feet are always padded. Fingers are almost never padded, but this trait does occasionally crop up. Their tails are long and much stronger than an actual cat's, the heavy musculature helping them maintain balance with it despite being bipedal. This is used almost exclusively when running, jumping or climbing. While they have grinding molars in the back their front dentition is very feline.
They have incredibly sharp retractable claws that function about as well as a slightly dulled dagger in terms of wrecking shop. Often an active tabaxi will have duller foot claws than hand claws, as they can extend these during a run and leave them as such when they put on the burst of speed tabaxi are sometimes known for. Some exceptional tabaxi can almost instantly reach 24mph from a dead stop and maintain this speed for six to ten seconds comfortably, and some can exceed 30mph in full sprints for shorter periods of time.
While similarities to particular breeds of cat both domestic and wild do occur these are superficial coincidences.

Genetics and Reproduction

In previous times tabaxi were spread thin enough that reproduction was often a matter of might-not-get-another-chance breeding, leaving the child barer to raise the resulting kittens on their own. In recent centuries tabaxi began to gather in ideal places to truly settle once information about where these places actually were spread more effectively. They adapted to proximity quickly with resources plentiful and other ways to satisfy the itch for new enrichment, and now where you find one tabaxi you might find a very large and extended family that might have somehow escaped your notice otherwise. Families may be a pair and their many children, a litter + the litter's partners + all the litters from those litters, or even a few branches of cousins out with many elderly being collectively cared for and the kittens being raised almost communally. Single and traveling tabaxi are still the most common awareness of the race outside of big cities or predominantly tabaxi communities.

Litter Capacity

Previously a child baring tabaxi may not raise many children over the course of their lifetime. Tabaxi may have as many as six kittens in a littler, but only have two breasts and produce a limited amount of fairly lean milk. As a result, if the parent didn't have access to a wet nurse or other fresh dairy replacement, usually all but one or two of the kittens would end up "misplaced" in a bid to keep the most vigarous kittens alive instead of risking them all starving to death. With the invention of production aids and artificial milk replacements like formula this is no longer a problem.

Hybridization

Like many of the more animal-resembling humanoid races tabaxi cannot interbreed with very many other races. Kobolds, dragonborn, dragons and gnolls are the only possibilities.

Growth Rate & Stages

Young tabaxi are referred to as kittens very affectionately, further confusing other humanoids who don't get why tabaxi are so insistent on the fact they're not cats. Older kittens approaching their teenage years are also called kits. Tabaxi start out with their eyes shut and ears pinned down for the first week or so of their life, and are very stubby and chunky. They grow to proportions more similar to those of something like a human baby in a matter of a weeks however, and become able to walk by two months. Parents on the move often wove tough back-mounted mats that the kittens could cling to once strong enough whenever they got tired or the terrain was too rough, as by that point their claws posed a serious risk to the parent.

A tabaxi infant, or kitten.

Ecology and Habitats

Tabaxi actually adore the water and frequently prefer to settle near it, be it fresh, brackish or salt. They don't float very well, but swim just fine, and often take advantage of their propensity to sink and walk along the bottom, helping them hold their breath for longer periods of time. Many tabaxi fishers are spear fishers who enter the water and take one fish at a time. They do well in basically any environment however, though they are often bothered by biting insects in expansive grasslands. Tabaxi adapt incredibly well to any place they stay in for a decent length of time. The modern city has not been a difficult adjustment for those that have entered these high density populations.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Unlike true felines tabaxi can taste the flavor sweet. and also aren't obligate carnivores. They do have a preference for meat, especially soft and fatty meats like fish and certain organ meats, but are happily omnivorous. They are also not susceptible to the same food safety issues as a true cat, able to eat things like garlic, onion, chocolate, caffeine and the like with no ill effect. Those with a diet high in dairy that groom themselves naturally are more prone to hairballs.

Biological Cycle

Tabaxi shed twice annually, the thickening and thinning of their coat triggered by photoperiod or extreme temperature shift. Tabaxi who work nocturnally struggle with unusual or patchy shed times as a result, and sun lamp therapy is a common correction. Spraying on a body covering of something akin to hairspray is usually required for tabaxi working in hair-sensitive spaces such as the food industry during these times, much like firbolg or minotaurs.

Additional Information

Facial characteristics

Eyes

The pupil is round when expanded and slit when contracted. Heterochromia is more common in tabaxi than in other humanoids. A second pair of eyelids protects their eyes, sometimes serving as a transparent cover in situations like swimming.

Nose

Not wet to the touch, but a warm little triangle with folded inward nostrils. Despite not having a hyper-acute sense of smell they still do a lot of sniffing at the air when they're anxious.

Ears

Their ears stand upright but may be rounded or triangular and vary in size. Occasionally an individual may be born with weak cartilage or have cartilage weaken over time, leading to floppy ears. Ears seen in cat breeds like the scottish fold do not exist in tabaxi.

Teeth & Mouth

While they have grinding molars in the back their front dentition is very feline. Their tongues are coated in a rough papillae that they can use when grooming, though many modern tabaxi will only groom their children in this way rather than themselves, instead using dry shampoos and infrequent showering. This is a point of contention among some.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

For humanoids the tabaxi people have especially keen senses. Their sense of smell isn't terribly heightened (though they are very good at learning about their own kind through scent specifically,) but their hearing is typically very sharp, as is their vision. They take in full environments without focus until they pinpoint a particular stimuli- usually movement or anything in the shape of eyes or things that ancestrally might have been potential threats.
Do not surprise your tabaxi friend with a cucumber. It will be very funny but they probably will not be your friend anymore.
Guard hairs on their body pick up on air currents around them but cause sensory overload issues with many forms of clothing. They tend to prefer very smooth, silky fabrics that slide instead of catching and pulling on these stiffer hairs. The whiskers on their face (and eyebrows, if they have them,) are rooted all the way in muscle and are used both in social situations (whisker-to-whisker brushing is a common greeting between family members, much like the minotaur neck press) and navigating in the dark and tight spaces.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

Unfortunately like other fuzzy vertebrates tabaxi are prone to things like fleas and lice. They can also be infested with the same ear mites that bother domestic cats and dogs, so tabaxi pet owners must take extra care when treating their pets for such.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

Usually a tabaxi is named after a sensation or creation that portrays what the parents' hope is for their child or the kind of beauty they hope they will bring in to the world. This can include animals, colors, temperatures, scents, areas, anything really. Commonly these names revolve around nature and art. Names are not gendered.
A name is more a gift than a necessary moniker. As such many tabaxi will spurn the name given to them by their family if treated poorly, and this can cause very deep rifts. Usually they take a new name from people that they consider their most trusted friends. A tabaxi that names themself is usually either raised by non-tabaxi, and so it doesn't have these connotations to them, or an exceptionally lonely or mistrusting individual. Among tabaxi raised by tabaxi, a tabaxi who chooses their own name is seen as likely trying to be dishonest and hide some immense fault, though they do not view other races with the same scrutiny.

Major Organizations

Tabaxi are among the only worshippers of the Cat Lord, though many prefer to worship other Deities. Avandra used to be a very common choice. Chauntea and Milil are the most common.

Beauty Ideals

Beauty to a tabaxi is typically based on proportion and how well-kept an individual appears. Scraggly looks and mixes of soft and hard angles are often considered ugly, as are asymmetrical ears and whiskers. A mix of short and long hair seems to be particularly fancied, especially on feminine sorts. A tabaxi that is angular may be considered gorgeous, and a tabaxi that is mostly round-featured may be considered very cute. They don't seem to care about weight or musculature, perhaps because of the fur thickness.

Gender Ideals

Tabaxi do not actually have much in the way of gender ideals. Non-binary individuals are extremely common among them, and in some primarily tabaxi settlements you might find no one there particularly cares about the concept at all. Tabaxi raised among other humanoids have absorbed the concept to an extent, especially those raised by non-tabaxi.

Relationship Ideals

Tabaxi have a storied history as a lonely sort that craves affection but value following their whims more. As such they have a lasting stereotype as flaky lovers who chase novel pleasures from other sapient beings. Tabaxi are actually as loyal to their partners as any other sapient race and have taken to lasting relationships firmly after they began to truly settle in to different places.

Common Taboos

They abhor being called cats by non-tabaxi. They often make this comparison about themselves when among other kinds of humanoids as a self-jest but will absolutely be offended if anyone else does the comparing.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Tabaxi are often treated with mistrust in smaller communities, especially black tabaxi who suffer from being viewed with the same bad luck taboos as a black cat. They are assumed to be too lazy, destructive, impossible to teach, or too easily distracted- basically people look at them and think it is going to be like dealing with a house cat and not a person. Tabaxi that resemble big cats sometimes have an assumption of violent nature made as well.
In more thoroughly mixed and larger populations tabaxi encounter this sort of discrimination on a much smaller scale. They become something of a novelty to those around them as the "rare exotic friend." They don't tend to like this any better, but it is more easily manipulated in their favor.

Lifespan

100 to 115 years

Average Height

Between 6 and 7 feet is average with lankier builds, but some are as short as 4 1/2 feet.

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Any colors or markings you can think of for any feline (big or small) is also found in tabaxi in a variety of combinations. There are also lykoi and hairless tabaxi, but they are far more rare.