Ah, thank you for replying! ^^ Sorry for the late reply, I wanted to reopen the game to double check everything else was working first.
I haven't had trouble with any other buttons, including the settings and credits from the beginning menu, and the ? icon with instructions in-game works as well. The minigames for feeding and playing work as well. It's only the paw menu button I've had issues with.
(Also, I don't think this is related, and it's not exactly an issue, but for windows there seem to be 2 .exe files that contain apparently identical versions of the game? They're the exact same file size (and gameplay is the same, including all buttons working except for the paw menu on the right side) but one has spaces between "Cat Cove Inn" and the other doesn't.)
<3 <3