system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why do cats frequently have white paws?

I've had several cats, and I just noticed that a lot of them have had white paws and / or a white chest. I was wondering if there is a reason for this particular color pattern, or if it's just how the genes happen to work out.
gpt
In most cases the coat of a cat is determined by alleles of the cats agouti gene. a lot of it is breeding preference since people seem to prefer cats with white paws, but for bi-color cats there are essentially 5 alleles a cat could posses the combination of which results in 10 possible coats ranging from completely colored to completely white. of those 10, 8 result in cat who has at least 1 paw colored white, 6 with all paws while. So statistically it is more likely for a cat to have white paws. this is because the alleles that cause white spotting are dominant in cats.

on an interesting side not some cats--like Siamese cats--display the opposite color phenomenon. their paws are almost always black. this is because of a breed-wide mutation in their pigment-forming gene which causes it to be temperature-sensitive. it fails to function at higher temperature around the body, but works at cooler temperatures on the legs and tail. If you were a very cruel owner and shaved a patch out of your Siamese cat's back and then strapped an ice-pack to the bald portion the new fur would grow back black instead of white.