everywhere online you find the same stereotype of a young attractive girl with animal ears, usually cat ears; to be the most attractive and desireable stereotype

If you go to anime image archives and search by tags, you'll find between a third and half of all images of girls are catgirls or some variation

And it doesnt match with the characters made by the industry, catgirls are WAY overrepresented in the fanart; with even regular human girls often being turned into catgirls by artists

And that's not even counting all the accessories like bowties over the hair that are intentionally meant to look like cat ears, or even elves and fairies who have pointy ears which for the reason I don't understand is sexier, or non anime franchies like my little pony who forged its popularity off this same catrgirl stereotype, or even in real life, where every party slut will be wearing a pair of fake cat ears and a choker.

So what's the deal? why is it so widespread? Why cats?