Mapping Out the Toe Bean Colors of America’s Cats

Have you heard of toe beans? They’re the soft pads underneath a cat’s paw, and the internet is downright obsessed with them. Whether it’s their texture, color, or even smell, there’s something about those little cat paw pads that make cat lovers go nuts — and we have to admit, they are pretty cute!

In the United States of Cats, however, what are the most common toe bean colors, and where are those kitties located? We were curious, so we conducted a fun survey of American cat owners to find out.

Why 365 Pet Insurance Cares

Why wouldn’t we care about those little toe beans? They’re adorable!

But seriously, a cat’s paws are wildly complex and can often be used to identify potential health issues. Your kitty’s paws have scent glands in them that make them smell like corn chips or popcorn — don’t tell us you don’t already know this! If the scent changes or seems off, it could be an indication of a health issue. Similarly, the temperature of your cat’s toe beans can often be the only evident sign of other health issues, like infections and fevers.

Since there’s nothing we care about more than the health of your kitties, we decided to conduct a study to bring our readers’ attention to those adorable toe beans. Not only are they cute, but monitoring them can help keep your feline friends happy, and that makes us happy.

Our Methodology

Believe it or not, there isn’t a giant collection of data publicly available on the internet for cat toe bean colors — we know, we thought that was crazy too. To remedy that, we surveyed 1,794 American cat owners across the country about their cats’ paw pad color. The survey yielded toe bean coloration for 3,104 cats. We sorted this information by state to get information on the most and least common toe bean colors and a breakdown of where specific colors appear most frequently.

The Most Popular Cat Toe Bean Colors in the United States

First, we sorted all of our data based on the reported toe bean color, regardless of state and region. This yielded data on the most and least popular toe bean colors in the country overall.

Overwhelmingly, the most common kitty toe bean color was pink or light pink, with 37.56% of all cats in the study having this color.

The next common paw pad color was black, accounting for 28.63% of all cats in our study. That means that 66.19% of all cats — just under two-thirds — have either pink paw pads or black paw pads.

Another large chunk of cats has toe beans that are a mixture of black and pink, with 19.61% of all cats falling into this blended category. That means that a massive 85.88% of all cats have black, pink, or black and pink paw pads.

The least common toe bean color was brown, accounting for just 0.56% of all cats in our study. Following closely behind brown was orange toe beans, which were found on just 0.80% of cats in our study. These were the only two paw pad colors that came in under 1%. Brick red accounted for exactly 1% of our feline subjects.

The Most Popular Cat Toe Bean Colors in Every State

Next, we wanted to see the most common paw pad coloration by state. We did a study on toe bean color, so we figured we’d have a little more fun while we were at it!

Unsurprisingly, every state was either dominated by cats with pink, black, or pink and black toe beans.

Out of all 50 states, 40 of them were home to cats with predominantly pink toe beans. Only eight states had mostly cats with black paw pads:

• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kentucky
• Michigan
• New Hampshire
• Ohio
• Rhode Island
• West Virginia

That leaves just two states — South Carolina and Wyoming — with cats that predominantly have pads that are a combination of pink and black.

Wrapping Up: Insights and Conclusions

So, do we have any insights? Sure! Most importantly, conducting a study on cat toe beans is a great destresser. Did the research need to involve browsing pictures of cat toe beans? No. Did we look at them anyway? You bet. We had to carry out due diligence…for science.

We did find that pink is the most prevalent toe bean color, followed by black and then a combination of pink and black. Over 85% of cats fall into one of these three toe bean categories. The rarest tow bean color is brown, with only 0.56% of all cats exhibiting this color, followed by orange with 0.80% and brick red with 1.00%.

And last but not least, we concluded that Americans love their cats enough to fill out a survey about their cats’ toe beans. If that’s not true love, we don’t know what is!