Quoting myself for more clarification. Did some more digging. Maztica and Chult "Tabaxi" are Humans. Human tribes wearing cat skins, worshipping some Jaguar god. A lot of lore about them with civil war in Mezro, involving Ubtao etc.The Tabaxi bipedal cats - are indeed not in Forgotten Realms.
You saved me having to do some digging. I have a recollection of cat people in some older D&D comics, but I seemed to recall they were cat shifters rather than always cats as I think (but don't know) that Tabaxi are. I think the ones I'm trying to remember might have had a bipedal cat form, though I'm not at all sure. In case anyone has better recollection than me, I think there was a series which had an avatar of Selune managing a pub in ... Waterdeep???? ... which had a disguised young cat prince hiding out at the bar, and then some sequel comics following the adventures of the previously lapsed paladin from that series which had him and his new party meet a tribe of cat people. Embarrassingly I'm not trying to recall these from when they released or anything, I think I read them just a year or so ago on Kindle Unlimited but can't find them now!
