Few things in life are certain, but there is one area of human behavior I fancy myself something of an expert — in fact, I rate my own judgment in this area so highly that I can confidently claim to predict the response of every conscious being with 100% accuracy, should you find yourself in a wagering mood. This is a social experiment that will require a little effort on your part, but I guarantee you will find events unfold exactly as I predict. Humans are all alike in this way.
Step the first: Visit a friend who owns a cat at a time when both cat and human are at home.
Step the second: Wait to be introduced to the cat, or for the cat’s name to be brought up in some slightly more organic fashion.
Step the third (this is crucial): At some later point in the conversation, refer to the cat by an incorrect gender.
Step the fourth: Wait. No one – no one – will let this minor, harmless error go. Every living, breathing person on this planet will immediately respond with “Actually, [s]he’s a boy/girl.” Everyone will say this. It does not matter if they are not the sort of person ordinarily given over to correcting others in conversation, or if they are particularly fond of their particular cat, or if they are the most gender-neutral, open-minded pansexual who ever went by “xie/xirr.”
They will tell you that you have misgendered their cat, even though cats do not appear to have visible genitals in the first place, and in all likelihood their cat was neutered years ago. Most likely their cat has never once engaged in the act of copulation. Their cat does not wear clothes or feel defined by societal gender roles. For all practical purposes, their cat has no gender. The gender of a cat is one of the least important things in the world. If this cat were to somehow transform, Tiresias-like, from male to female in the next instant, it is highly likely that nothing about its (or its owner’s) life would change a jot. And yet people cannot resist from adhering to a course of strict and constant accuracy when it comes to the gender of a cat. It is inexplicable.
Misgender a fish or a bird and it is likely you will hear nothing. No one can misgender a dog; female dogs have those unsettling little nipple-pellets running along the length of their midsections and science has not yet found a way to make dog penises invisible. But misgender a cat and you will never have a moment’s peace til your error is corrected.
I do not pretend to know why this is. I do not know what good it will do you to know this. But it is true, and perhaps that is enough.
Tags: cats, cats are a construct, gender, gender is a construct, human behavior
“science has not yet found a way to make dog penises invisible”
This is why The Toast is searching for it’s One True Gal Scientist, right? I mean, yes, I love to read about professional tracks and why my brain needs sleep and all, but this has to be the Holy Grail of Science, doesn’t it?
My friend was so relieved when her boy dog was finally old enough to get neutered. She said she felt she needed to apologize to visitors about all the balls.
This is the great thing about australian sheepdogs/sheepdog mixes. Not only are they adorable but they are so fluffy that it’s almost as if they don’t have genitals. Everything unpleasant on a dog is hidden by the fluff.
I feel the same way about centerfolds from the 1970s.
Wow! My brother brought his dog with him at Xmas this year and even though she has a girl’s name, various people referred to her as “him” repeatedly and yet NO ONE in my family corrected them. What does this mean?!
No one cares if you misgender a dog! I DON’T KNOW WHY
This is such an odd phenomenon. I’m somehow glad that my anecdote confirms the canine corollary you postulate.
Oh, honey. Come stand around my dog park, and you will learn this is not true. (It can be hard to determine the presence or absence of a dog penis when you’re standing up and would rather not bend down to look for a penis, because there is nothing else you could plausibly be doing in that position, and no matter how much we as a society value addressing pets by their correct gender, we still do not condone openly staring at their junk.)
Having said that, I will grant you that some dog owners do not care if you misgender their beasts, whereas 100% of cat owners care.
I don’t care if people call my girl-dog “he,” but then if they ask her name, I feel compelled to add that she’s a girl. (Because most boy dogs aren’t named Winnie.)
LOTS of people care if you misgender a dog, especially if said dog is a stereotypically tough/macho breed that is female, because giant burly junkyard guard dogs aren’t always male, damnit.
See also: female bulldogs, who invariably have adorably girly names like Buttercup or Beulah.
I know an English bulldog named Princess.
Yes exactly!
My uncle really cares. I think having a tiny, fluffy dog named snowball is about as much an affront to his masculinity as he can handle; it’s really important to him that you know the teacup poodle-esque pup he’s carrying around is a BOY, thankyouverymuch.
I care if someone misgenders my (female) dog. Because all dogs aren’t dudes, and I always think that the misgenderer doesn’t understand that “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” is horseshit.
I got so used to telling Ned that he was a good boy that now I say the same to Pearl. She doesn’t care. Or know.
My other half calls his female dog ‘good boy’. It drives me bonkers and he does it all the more because of that.
I do that too! The dog I had from age 7 to 23 was a boy so even if I know a dog I’m talking to is female I just can’t help but tell they they are such sweet boys. It’s habit!
I kept asking my parent’s female dog who’s a sweet boy because that’s what I say to my male cat.
I apologise to my horse when I tell her she’s a good boy because the previous horse I rode was her brother. And vice versa. I’m always getting it wrong and I always apologise to them.
I have 2 little dogs, one female, one male, so I always say “good dog”. I feel smug at the dog park, never misgendering, always with the ever-appropriate “good dog”. Until I reflexively address a large dog as “little one”, the most frequent name in my house because our 2 resemble each other and it’s too much work to always look and see which name to use. Immediate plunge from smug to embarrassed.
That dog lovers are cheerfully oblivious
See I will correct somebody who refers to a female animal as “him” just because male is generally treated as the default. The other way around I don’t care.
100% accurate in my experience both as misgenderer and owner of the misgendered.
OK but look, a couple things:
1. my cat likes to lie on her back with her legs all splayed out and show you her tits and the more I call her “Mister Cat” the more she does it.
2. I used to be a cat sexist and I feel really bad about it, so it is important to me that I perpetually acknowledge that my cat, who is the best cat in the world, is a female cat. You ever heard some jerk talk about how girl cats are mean or aloof or can’t get along with other girl cats or some bullshit like that? They say it all the time! Fuck those people, they can come over to my place and my cat will bite them and bite them.
My dad’s neighbours had a non-neutered fluffy boy cat who liked to do the same thing and my dad’s wife nicknamed him Tufty Balls.
Tufty Balls!!! Awesome, I love it.
HOLLAAAAAAA my girl cat is the sweetest cat there is.
I order my male dog to “go pee on his foot” when someone does something sexist like that. Of course, my male dog does not know that command. He has only half the brain-power of most dogs and has taken 4 years to learn “Quiet”, so, no, I do not have time/patience to teach him that trick. I just watch the horrified human’s face when I give that command. You can see it go through their mind: Will this poorly trained animal really do such a thing? He seems so simple, but he is clearly dedicated to this woman. I’ll be more careful.
My cousin has a boy cat she refers to as ‘she’. What happens then?!
Cats are girls.
Why are dogs boys?
cause they slobber and lick their own genitals all the time
they also eat girl leavings
All dogs are girls because they are the best, just like human women.
My friend called our other friend’s cat a “she” (HE is named Tricky) and told us the same thing, even though he and his fiancee have a boy cat he never misgenders. Riddle me that, Ms. Cliffe!
That’s my dad’s excuse for always referring to my male cats as “she”. He is always affronted when I point out that if that were truly the case, he wouldn’t be referring to my female cat as “he”.
My dad apparently has animal-gender dyslexia.
We always had male cats when I was growing up, I think because they’re cheaper to have neutered, so in my mind all cats are dudes.
and now I have the Dogtanian theme running through my head.
(“One for all and all for one! Muskerhounds are always ready”…)
Our cat went through a heat cycle before we got her spayed, and she came onto Steve like he was an Aristocat doused in Sex Panther.
My two cats, both apparently female, were unspayed when they came into my care. One of them went into heat regularly and flirted with everyone in the room during those times. Her littermate acted out far less frequently, but when she did, she acted like a tom. Sprayed things, yowled at her reflection in a mirror, straddled her sister and bit her neck (which the sister, while in heat, rather liked!). These activities were variously obnoxious and gross, but otherwise I’ve always been quite proud of my little queer cats.
Everybody wants to be a cat,
Because a cat’s the only cat, who knows where it’s at.
etc.
Aristocats is high up in the running for the most underappreciated animated movie. Just sayin’.
I used to teach upwards of 40 piano students a week. I knew names of students, parents, siblings, and pets. Despite this, I was weekly given at least 3 disapproving stares for messing up a pet’s gender.
I apologize that I was never able to keep track of Arrow or Fluffy’s genders. I deeply regret these errors.
I have fallen silent when a friend has called Trudy “fella”, “little guy”, or referred to her as a him, but my mind was reeling trying to stifle the corrections–it took effort. I hold a grudge against him to this day and he’ll never know what he did wrong. (I don’t really invent and hold secret grudges.)
I had a dream several months ago that my cat came out as trans. That’s really all I have to contribute here.
The best cat ever in the entire world, Maggie, was a giant fluffy drag queen of a cat. There was a lot of explanation for guests about “well, she’s biologically male but has chosen to perform female gender. And, you know, she’s a cat.”
We also called her Generallissimo Maggimissimo, because we had a lot of spare time.
How did it come out? I’m imagining…
Cat: “Please calm down. I understand this is big news, but I’m hurt by how much you’re freaking out about this. Can’t you focus on the fact that this is the right decision for me and that, underneath it all, I’m still the same cat I was yesterday?”
Everyone: “AAAAARGH A TALKING CAT OH SHIT OH SHIT.”
My next-door neighbors have a sweet little black and white cat. I have no idea what its gender is because THEY refer to it sometimes as “he” and sometimes as “she.”
My dad seriously did not want me to name my (male) kitten Mischief when I was a kid because Mischief was (apparently) a girl cat’s name.
That was 18 years ago. I am still confused.
That is a great name for any cat, regardless of sex. Maybe someone should’ve explained to your dad that it’s not “Miss Chief”, it’s Mischief.
It is a great name for a cat, unless that cat is actually just super lazy and not at all mischievous and mostly sits on your feet for years, growing larger and larger, before dying of heart failure just days after his fourth birthday.
Which is why we mostly called him “Phat Cat.” (Spelling also my father’s idea, because it was 1996 and my dad thought himself very funny.)
I’ve never laughed so hard at a story of a cat dying, I probably have never laughed at anything where a cat dies, but at four years old? That cat was on a mission to die young. Oh parents and their mocking the youth slang in the 90’s thinking they’re being funny. My mom still ends sarcastic statements with “NOT” and I cringe every time.
MY MOM DOES THAT TOO. I honestly thought I was past the stage of being embarrassed by my mother (I am 34, for crying out loud) and yet in her Angry Liberal Voice she totally pulled the, “NOT.” the first time she met my boyfriend. *cringe*
I think moms will always find a way to embarrass us. Yeah, even though my 32-year-old ego has been beaten to a senseless pulp.
I don’t know why but this story made me laugh and laugh and cry with laughter at my desk.
Live slow, die young, leave a spherical fluffy corpse.
I had a cat called Mischief who was equally misnamed. She grew to the size of a beachball although happily she lived to be, I don’t know, 10 or 12.
My boyfriend and I had a long debate over whether the name he proposed for our boy cat (“Moxie”) was a girl cat’s name. We went with it anyway, and now our burly bruiser of a cat regularly gets called “she” by everyone. We don’t really bother correcting people, though.
We have a girl cat named Moxie! Gender doesn’t matter; it’s clearly the best name for a cat.
My mother wasn’t too pleased when I, at ten years old, decided to name my first (female) kitten Mischief. But then she (the cat, not my mother) promptly got herself stuck up a forty-foot tree, and proceeded to spend the next 16+ years being a little hellraiser, so I think it turned out okay after all.
Of course, now I have a girl cat named Steve McQueen, so perhaps I am not the best example.
But all cats are girls and all dogs are boys. Have you ever seen a cat penis?*
*I have seen a cat penis, I am quoting Community.
Yes! All cats are girls and all dogs are boys and they get married.
My desire for biological accuracy is at war with how adorable that would be. Little kitty/dog weddings! Little kitty/dog honeymoons!
Nothing biological about weddings!
The last cat I had before this cat … we all thought she was a lady cat. We called her “she” all the time, and she didn’t have a name, which further complicated this. Well, I had to give her to friends when I moved to the city & she stayed on the island. They took her to the vet & discovered that SHE was a HE! Cue gasping!!!!! Now they all call her a “he” but I still call her a “she” because we were best friends for that year and I refuse to be best friends with a male-gendered individual.
My mom had a boy cat named Marge as a child. Nobody calls anybody Marge anymore, do they? Not even people who name their infants Mabel and Edna and that kind of thing. Or Marjorie either, you never see a Marjorie these days, cat or not cat.
(during the Depression, this was. Marge was a mean outdoor-only farm cat that my mother was not allowed to have as a house pet and for all I know he did not even know he was her cat. Maybe he knew he had a girl’s name and maybe he didn’t. One day he was hit by a milk truck and died.
this has been: a sad story.)
Oh, I always love the idea of giving cats human-mom names. Like Patricia or Joan or Brenda. Or even just human names in general. I once had a friend with two cats named Becky and Olivia. Before I knew this, I once went over to her house and her mother exclaimed “Becky and Olivia are shut in the back room, don’t let them out!” and I was very confused for a bit.
My cat is Klaas-Jan Huntelaar because I like the idea of giving pets human celebrity names. (Although if I’d got one of the girls he would have probably been Marieke after the Jacques Brel song because Noord-Brabant might as well be Flanders.)
Oh, that’s the one of most beautiful Jacques Brel songs. “Zonder liefte, waarme liefte…” and I don’t even know the language but apparently I can sing like a bilingual Belgian when inspired.
and also I thought Marieke would make a wonderful cat name.
It is so beautiful! Trust a Francophone to make Dutch, one of the most ludicrous of languages, sound pretty. Basically, I wanted to give the now Klaas-Jan a Dutch name since he’s a Dutch cat (from a small Brabant village), and the only ones I could think of were soccer players and Marieke and ones that are currently held by friends of mine.
A friend of mine named her cat Bramwell Tovey (after the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra music director (neither of us have ever lived in British Columbia)) because, and I quote, “neither of them will know.”
An old, odd teacher of mine had a cat called Simon.
Growing up, nearly all of our cats had human names. Mike, Becky, Mary, Chester, Emily, Thelma, Louise, Zachary, Zoe, Claude… I don’t understand what’s so peculiar about this.
you never see milk trucks these days
when my Dad was growing up in Montreal there were horse-drawn milk trucks (there were horse-drawn snow plows too.)
I drove behind a milk truck All. The. Way. To. Work. almost every day when I lived outside of Albany. They were tanker trucks, though, headed for the bottling facilities. Winding 2-lane highway with frequent grades and 12 cars behind each truck going 28 mph. I remember cursing more during that period of my life.
I can’t say it happened 100% of the time, but a truly shocking number of restaurant servers misgendered me when I was ~12-years-old. In their defense, I did sport a dutch-boy haircut, and the lumps in my t-shirt were easily mistaken for moobs.
I don’t recall my parents ever issuing any corrections! Am I a dog?
Is someone supposed to be a DOG in this scenario?!
(obligatory)
In related pet-gendering news there is a product called Neuticles, which are essentially truck-nutz for your neutered male dog, prosthetic implanted fake balls.
A Weimaraner, the bro-friendliest of all dogs except for maybe Labs, at this dog kennel where I worked had the implants and our whole staff kept daring each other to touch them. Someone eventually did and reported they were abnormally hard.
Bros do love them some Weims.
Weird. I still only associate them with those Wegman calendars my parents always had.
My aunt and my uncle have had several and I have house-and-dog-sat for them. What I took away from these experiences is that they’re the most freaking neurotic dog breed out there. Their last male, Buck, would not go anywhere at all without dragging his security blanket (which was the size of a full-sized comforter) with him and the female, Sadie, could not be left unattended near art supplies without gobbling them down. (My uncle is a professional artist.) Weimaraner shit after eating pastels is a particularly jarring thing to pick up in the back yard.
When I was taking my parents’ dog to obedience lessons, it turned out his presence was some kind of ambient sedative for neurotic dogs so the trainer always made us stand next to the Weimaraner. That might be the most neurotic dog I’ve ever seen, and my parents’ other dog used to hide under the table if you looked directly at her so he had stiff competition.
Ugh, Neuticles, please, no. The worse thing about male dogs is their genitals all out there rudely for everyone to see, as if there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Neutering is a boon and a blessing to delicate human aesthetic sensibilities.
Nobody has ever misgendered mine – but then they’re called Captain Stripeypants and Saffron so it’s fairly obvious. (And yes, they are named after Nathan Fillion and Christina Hendricks.)
Our feral stable cats could be either gender – they are Cat One, Cat Two, Cat Three and Tiger. One, Two and Three are a mother and two offspring – no idea which is the mother or what gender they are (apart from mum). The cats protection league had neutered them but weren’t clear which was which so they became 1, 2 and 3 going by how much black they have on their faces.
A good retort is “Why do you cisgender your cat?”
This is all just a cruel reminder that no, I can’t bag out of the rest of the afternoon at work to go cuddle with my (boy) cat or play with my (girl) dog.
Also: one of my pet peeves is how people to force you into being a dog person or a cat person. I DON’T BUY INTO YOUR FALSE DICHOTOMY.
Agreed, I grew up with both. I like some cats, I like some dogs. I hate some cats, some cats hate me. Some dogs can be annoying, but some are also sweet. They’re not like 2 big monolithic cultures or something.
First visit with a new doctor, she took my health history and asked questions like are you allergic to penicillin. Then finished with are you a dog person or a cat person. I stammered I prefer dogs but have nothing against cats. Dog person went in the chart.
Each time I went to that doctor thereafter, a nurse would poke her head into the waiting room and be seen to be taking a quick inventory before withdrawing. Shortly afterward, the doc’s dogs would often be allowed into the waiting room. I guess that was when only affirmed dog people were present. The even-huge-for-the-breed Rottweiler, Itty Bitty Dog (no kidding), would politely greet each person in turn, then settle in front of the sickest. One day I asked my partner to distract Itty Bitty because he was consoling my illness by sitting on my foot, which was losing circulation! He and the other dogs were quite therapeutic, calming and soothing patients. I miss that doc.
I don’t correct people who call my orange cat “he” (she is actually a calico, all orange except one black thumb). But if the conversation continues in a cat-related vein, I will say something like “yes, she is very fat,” and then we discuss that she is female, even though she’s orange, and very fat, though I’m not sure how.
Please post photos of cat in which thumb is visible.
Oh! I have two one my phone! Here you go:
Also she has a few black hairs scattered throughout, and black and brown freckles. And these photos are somehow very slimming. And apparently she likes to sit on orange things.
I knew that calico cats were female but I did not know that orange cats were male! Now I’m reading this wikipedia article and it’s amazing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_coat_genetics
Not all of them, though! There are orange females.
My parents just got an orange girl kitten and someone told them technically that when girl cats are orange they’re actually red. Because they can’t be orange? But she sure looks orange to me.
Aren’t female ginger cats XXY chromosomed?
That’s male calicos, I think? They’re sterile, too.
Ginger cats are about 3/4 male, 1/4 female.
No, female ginger cats are just very rare, as the gene responsible for yellow, black and gray fur are located on the X chromosome, in order to have a female ginger she would need to get only the yellow gene from both parrents. Its easier to get a yellow male because the Y chromosome doesnt carry fur color, so he only needs to get the yellow gene, no conflicting colors. XXY chromosome is a mutation/disorder, these are sterile, and have all kinds of problems. Humans have it too.
Check for secret hidden non-orange hairs!
CAT PICS YES. I have a ginger and white lady with three tiny brown-tabby patches.
Mallory are you not aware that boy cats PEE ON THINGS
??? all cats pee on things, everything pees, that’s what litterboxes are for josh
boy cats are much more likely to pee outside the box, though, this is known misandric cat science
this is why Klaas-Jan had his balls cut off as soon as the vet would do it.
i have a boy cat and he has never done this
That’s good! Maybe you should consider being more grateful for the good things about your cat and excusing his doltishness.
Non-neutered male cats spray, much moreso than females do. Fix your pets! You’ll prevent younglings and the neurochemical changes that result from the change usually make them a lot more pleasant in a variety of ways.
It makes less of a difference when pets are fixed but when they aren’t, hoooo boy is there a difference between physical sexes (with many species it’s really obvious, even) With cats a lot of people contend that sex matters with new cat acclimation and the like no matter what the fixed status. I’m not sure of the veracity of that claim, but animals have social instincts that can matter with that stuff.
Really the conflation of sex and gender is the issue. Correctly assigning male / female to one (assuming you don’t have an intersex pet, which happens!) just indicates what role they would play should they attempt to produce young. It has no real relevance that would necessitate insistence in conversation.
My sister’s female cat pees on things when she has a UTI. It’s the worst.
jfruh, you are the same jfruh that posts comments at Language Log, aren’t you? It’s weird when the Internet starts to feel like the nightclub circuit of a mid-size college town.
Also, the only indoor things that my boy cat pees on are my feet, and that’s only when I’ve been sitting at the computer ignoring him for hours on end, so I can’t really blame him.
One in the same! It’s a remarkable that nobody else uses this harmless four-letter sequence consistently (although someone beat me to jfruh.tumblr.com darn it).
snip them instantly when they are born! Or if possible, while still in the womb. PREVENT THE PEE-SPRAYING!
Now I’m trying to remember whether you misgendered my cat on Saturday.
NO I was very careful
My one girl cat has a boy’s name and I enjoy yelling at people when they refer to her as “him”.
but but… what if my cat’s gender seems to really matter to him? my cat is a black and white tuxedo-style, FABULOUSLY FLAMBOYANT, possibly homosexual cat (he’s never been with another male cat that anyone knows of). don’t ask me how he knows, or why he’s got such strong feelings about it, but I really do think that he’d be bothered if he were misgendered. not that anyone misgenders him because it’s so obvious that he’s masculinely fabulous.
Excuse me but my tuxedo cat is a girl in a tuxedo like Marlene Dietrich
hee hee I too have a lovely lady-tux kitty. She has markings across her face, half white and half black, and she was a stray that came by our patio one day and made friends with my other cat (Loki Tiberius Cat) and we didn’t know she was female. My partner promptly named her Harvey Dent, and by the time we caught her and took her to the vet the next morning, she knew her name. So we gave her a girly middle name – Harvey Charlene Dent Cat. She’s your favorite waitress in the diner – attractive in a sturdy, practical way, casually affectionate, no-nonsense.
I also like to call her Harvey: Warrior Princess. She is a fierce beast compared to her brother the Norse Cat of Mischief (he pre-dates my knowledge of Marvel properties so he’s Norse, not Asgardian – though I could see him thinking he’s the cat version of Tom Hiddleston…)
My relatives have a boy cat that they named Sarah before they knew “she” was a he. They get very offended when we refer to him as a her. Whatever.
I don’t know that anyone’s ever misgendered my cats, but that’s probably just because all cats are girls. Also, they’re named Luna and Amelia.
This is very close to home, as we recently found out that our kitten Gus Meowzahn (it’s football-related) is a lady. We’re keeping her name, because it’s great, but it’s been shockingly hard to get our pronouns straight (pun lolz). Her brother, Hairy S. Truman, is allegedly a boy but his swimsuit area is incredibly furry so who can say for sure.
I’m delighted that you described your cat as having a “swimsuit area.”
Is this the right place to say, hesitantly, that dog bikinis are actually a thing? Not that I’m excusing them, but they are a Thing that Exists and that makes me sad, so I had to share it here.
I suppose you could put one on a cat, but that seems…ill-advised.
Swimsuit area! My Hateful Kitten (who was born under the deck outside my work building, named Spot, caught, spayed, returned, then caught when it got really cold last year and brought home and renamed Hildy) is all black except for what looks like a white bikini across her undercarriage. It looks a little obscene when she stretches out and rolls on her back. Still won’t let me touch her, though.
My husband misgenders our boy cat all the time, which makes me crazy. When I call him on it, he just shrugs and says it doesn’t matter because of the neutered thing mentioned above.
Related: We’ve had 3 cats, all named, but our first, a beautiful female black shorthair was only ever referred to as Cat. It was like she rejected our foolish human attempts to label her.
Our cats (a boy and a girl who were littermates) have names but are consistently called Orange Cat and Soft Cat.
Whenever people say “oh they were neutered, they’re not anything” I always retort that if they ever have to get a reproductive operation that renders them sterile, I’m calling them an it from then on.
The thing is that if you don’t correct people and they find out later they get SO EMBARRASSED that they had it wrong for so long even though it’s not like the cat cares.
I have a tiny, fluffy, pretty male cat named Bunny and if I don’t correct people right away that he’s male even though I DON’T CARE they freak out and apologize like I caught them kicking him.
It is a mystery.
I have a calico. She is a she as most calicos are. There are male calicos but they are rare (and usually sterile). When people misgender my cat they get a crash course on cat genetics (calico markings are linked to the X chromosome).
My cat’s name is Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, which is an obviously male name unless you’re not Dutch or have no familiarity with soccer players which is probably more of the people he/I encounters. He is a little dorkbutt and also the Pope.
My cat is the manliest looking boy cat you will ever see – he has an enormous head/cheeks, massive shoulders, tiny little waist/hips and giant fuzzy black balls*. No one ever mis-sexes him.
*Seriously, the first time I took him to the vet she was looking at his chart as I manoeuvred him out of the cat basket and was all “…so, he’s an unneutered male OH I SEE yes, he is.”
In disagreement of the “no one cares about bird gender”, my mother has a female parrot named George. We correct everyone on her gender. The first time, it is usually accompanied with an explanation that we didn’t know until after a blood test whether she was male or female.
My family’s giant 22 pound cow cat gets called a “koshka” all the time and he doesn’t mind at all. My grandma (the main mis-genderer) does so because she thinks he looks too cute and fat to be a boy. The rest of the family calls him fatkins, squish, bublik, and sandwich. Koshka also rolls off the tongue easier if you’re asking him in a plaintive voice who the good koooshka is (He’s the good koshka).
Am I the only one who missed the word “cat” in the sentence “My family’s giant 22 pound cow cat”? Because after mentally saying, “He’s a good koshka.” to myself in the appropriate voice (you all know the voice, don’t lie to me) I sat pondering how giant a 22 pound cow really could possibly be, and wondered if miniature cows existed like miniature horses did and now I want one.
They do exist! One of my coworkers had one. They’re definitely not as small as minature horses, though. More like cow-ponies. She had a baby, though, and the baby was tiny and adorable and perfect.
Ahhhhhh!!!
Yes, that’s what I saw too.
Well, koshka is kitten in Russian, so your cat’s not being misgendered because that word is used regardless of gender.
No, a koshka is a female cat. A kitten is kotyenok.
The shelter where we adopted my guinea pigs (RIP dudes) told us one was male and one was female even though they both had penises. I named the female guinea pig Lola (OBVIOUSLY), and years later my dad was traumatized when he went to the vet and found out SHE WAS A HE. I was all, “Dad, I know, didn’t you see her wang,” and he couldn’t figure out how to refer to the guinea pig. There was a lot of “she, well, really he.” I kept acting as if she was a girl because it turns out guinea pigs do not care, because they are rodents.
My mother has been pals with my cat for over a decade and she still routinely misgenders him. Her excuse is that “he’s girly,” which always struck me as a weird thing to say about a cat. Thinking about it more deeply, though, it’s probably because the primary cat of my childhood and the cat love of her life was a total bro–yelling, stomping, taking up space, picking fights he was doomed to lose, shitting in the bathtub… I don’t think anyone ever misgendered him!
My mother, on her giant fluffy Siamese cat: “He has a sexy walk.” Moms!
My husband and I refer to our cats as “the girls” or “the monsters.” They are both. Though we often call Lizzie “Lizard” because she looks like a velociraptor. And sometimes she looks like Voldemort when we pet her face.
“The Monsters” is how our 2 little dogs are referred to at my house. Useful because both genders are represented. Also useful when saying “dogs” out loud would provoke an unwanted canine response. Kind of like spelling in front of the children. Though dogs are NOT equivalent to children. Mine are adults. They are not my children, though they are my family.
I hold my cat like a baby and sing to her: “Miss Kitty, my baby girl cat! Miss Kitty, my sweet little cat! Meow meow meow!”* If you are referring to the cat as a boy, you are oblivious and not paying attention. SHE HAS A PINK SPARKLY COLLAR.
*Judge me alllll you want. She loves this. She purrs and drools and doesn’t care that I am bad at writing songs for cats.
My husband sings to our orange cat every day. It is always about how she smells like poop (which is not especially true). So, you are at least better than some at cat songs…
It’s awesome, though, how you can totally see what human gender characteristics are causing people to misgender the cat. We have two girl cats with girl names, and the moderately long-haired dilute calico with big eyes who is passive around company obviously never gets misgendered, as she fits both human and cat gender norms. The black cat with funny eyes who is fond of suddenly jumping onto people’s laps when they’re looking the other way and likes to bash into legs with significant force gets a lot of masculine pronouns, though. Obviously she doesn’t care, and maybe she would feel they suited her, if she spoke English. But she knows about two words (or the tone of voice in which the words are said), and they are not pronouns. The world will never know.
My cat is of male sex but his gender is fluid, sometimes he is a Cuddle Bandit, sometimes he is a Fur Land Mine. I’m still looking for pet stores that celebrate him
He has started culling our field mice squatters this season and caught three this week! I love you Bob, and your catlike prowling prowess, but do not lick me with that tongue. It feels good but you have death breath. Let us instead ram our heads together
Death Breath. Perfect descriptor!
“Gender is fluid in our household” is how we explained our biologically male cat, Maggie, to the vet in San Francisco. She took that statement in stride.
I have two female cats. They are routinely referred to as “The Heathens” collectively, and “the pretty girl” and “the asshole” when apart.
(The pretty girl is a medium/long hair tortie who elicits “Awww! She’s so pretty!” every time we go to the vet, has a squeak in place of a meow [except at the vet, where’s it’s a ear-shattering yowl] and delicate manners. The asshole peed on my bed with me in it and regards her litterbox as something to be emptied but not filled.)
I have seen a cat penis.
Me too, and it is horrifying.
I’m so sorry.
My cat’s name is Commander; everyone assumes she is a dude. Oh friends, I would never have named a male cat Commander; it would not have been half as much fun. She’s such a sweetie.
To be fair, her name is a reference to male characters in three different things I like.
Thank you for the Tiresias reference. My day is better now than it was before.
I named my teeny cat Bruce (she is actually a munchkin …. did not know that until I let her out of the carrier the shelter sent her home to me in, but that is a story for another time) and she is misgendered 24/7, even in her own home. Just rolls with it, though. Hang loose, Bruce.
I just moved in with a new roommate and her super adorable/super weird ginger cat named Wolfgang, and it is actually everything I can do to stop myself from calling him Ferguson. I have known this cat for less than 48 hours, and yet I have already mentally decided that he was incorrectly named. WTF???!
I guess I mis-gendered a cartoon cat — Azrael, from The Smurfs — by giving my family’s lady cat the same name (I was five at the time, and a big Smurfs fan). Gargamel never corrected me.
WAIT. Azrael ISN’T a lady cat?
Oops. I’m half-right/ We’re both right?
I double-checked with the internets and apparently, the first Azrael, in the Smurfs comic books, was female. But for the TV show, they made Azrael male, and he was also male in later comics.
Given that I specifically named our cat after the TV show Azrael, I think my misgendering stands!
I am one of these people who does this and it is because I feel superior to cat-misgenderers due to my superpower, which is that I can determine an adult cat’s gender on sight with about 89% accuracy. I’m not even kidding.
Me too. I’m almost always right. Shittiest super-power ever.
Same. I also love cats too much so that’s probably has something to do with it.
Cats care so little about gender. Cats don’t even have self-awareness.
But humans. Humans care.
My neighbors growing up (from England!) had cats named Edward and Wallis, and it turned out that they were BOTH lady cats (and not just Wallis, as originally thought), and so Edward was always referred to “Edward the girl.” As a child, I had the Edward-is-a-girl thing down pat, but I was really confused about why Wallis wasn’t known as “Wallis the girl” because I thought that Wallis could only be Wallace. But then I learned, because England, and then I got it.
Here I was feeling all pleased for busting gender norms by getting our very handsome, very charming male cat a hot pink collar, but now I just feel silly.
“They will tell you that you have misgendered their cat, even though cats do not appear to have visible genitals in the first place”
But have you ever seen an intact male cat? It’s impossible to miss. Two perfect fluffy pom-poms sticking straight out of their backside. It’s adorable and disturbing at the same time.
My dad has a farm cat with one fluffy white ball and one fluffy orange ball. It is adorable.
My strategy to avoid misgendering someone’s pet (because it is apparently a horrific affront to most people) is to refer to all animals by neutral, repetitive diminutives – “hello kitty-kit” to a cat or “hello pup-pup” to a dog. I’ve never had a problem with either of those.
However, when referring to a friendly full-sized horse as a “lovely pony” I have received a surprising amount of anger. “He’s not a pony, he’s a HORSE, actually” etc. Now, this I could sort of see if someone was insecure about having a “hony” (a horse that’s just over 14.2hh, which is an undesirable height for certain types of horses) but if I’m calling your gigantic Dutch Warmblood a “pony” surely you can understand that I’m using the term affectionately and figuratively, right?
Correct. But, then, my friend said “is he a Quarter Horse?” to someone who WIGGGGED out and said “ACTUALLY, HE IS AN IMPORTED DUTCH WARMBLOOD” so those people are just mad touchy.
Horse people are suuuuuper touchy about breeds. Mostly a class and skill thing, and an imported Dutch Warmblood is kind of a big deal in terms of money. The people who have those horses are very proud of it, in my experience.
Also, the United States Pony Club, which is a big youth riding organization that is very old-school and styles itself after British riding traditions refers to all horses as ponies, even if they are describing movements from Olympic competition.
So true – except my bff’s kids constantly refer to my pretty, fluffy dog as “she,” even though he does have a fairly visible fluffy penis. But I do always correct them! I feel like he IS male (although he’s neutered), because he likes to hump things, and therefore it’s an affront to his dignity to be referred to as “she.” And I correct people when they refer to my cat as “he.” But my cat is tough and unflappable in a way that just SEEMS female to me. Finally, I once went out with someone who had named his two female dogs “Franny” and “Zooey,” and I always wonder what was wrong with me that I didn’t end things as soon as I discovered this.
When my mother was young she and her siblings had a large grey cat by the name of Oscar. Oscar was, by all accounts, very masculine in appearance and behavior. One day Susie, my mother’s youngest sister, four at the time, screamed loudly and was heard wailing and crying all the way downstairs, “Oshkar is falling apart!” Oscar had had six small grey babies in her bed.
I received the best short URL ever for this article (it needs to be shared as much as possible):
bit.ly/JEEWLE
It makes me want to go to the local shelter, adopt a male cat, and name him Julie. Then I could stand on the front stoop at dusk and shout, Jeee-ew-leeeeee! across the neighborhood.
My cat was named after the Biblical tax collector, which means no one knows how to spell his name. There are at least three variants floating around. My husband and I can’t even agree on the spelling. This cat is also seven pounds or so and has long flowing hair, so everyone, inevitably, assumes that he’s female. I did the same thing when I first saw him. When his first owner referred to him as male (she’d raised him from a kitten, so she’d know), I had to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out, “Are you SURE?!”
People misgender my dog all the time as she is scruffy (think a smaller Sandy from Annie) and low to the ground, thus making nipples/weiner tough to see. I don’t usually correct people, unless they as what “his” name is, and I casually respond “Her name is Maddie.”
More often than not, people are extremely apologetic and act like they have make an unforgiveable blunder, as if my dog is thinking “WELL, I NEVER!” I usually respond with “It’s ok, she’s not offended, she is a dog,” but the whole interaction always strikes me as odd.
Re: awkward pet owner interactions – how do people respond to “Your dog is SO CUTE!”?? Do you say “thank you,” even though you had absolutely no influence on how cute your dog turned out to be (other than getting her a decent hairdo), or “I know, right?” which is really more appropriate but comes out all wrong? Or is there some 3rd option I haven’t thought of yet?
Whenever someone calls my pet cute I always respond with “She is, isn’t she?!” I’m proud. I don’t care if she was born that cute, I still get giddy when people compliment her.
Me too. I'm almost always right. Shittiest super-power ever.
We acquired an orange tabby and assumed it was male, since 75% of marmalades are, and named her Brains. When the vet found her spay scar, I told my husband we should change her name to Amy Pond, and he pointed out that my assuming Brains was a boys’ name was wildly sexist. “Why don’t we just call her Boobs?” So Brains she has remained.
It is impossible to misgender our other kitty, though, cause he wasn’t neutered until he was an adult and is hence 16 pounds of muscle. The same vet, poking at his tummy and expecting squish, remarked, “This is one *solid* cat.”
Well, koshka is kitten in Russian, so your cat's not being misgendered because that word is used regardless of gender.
My cat is a biological female but her name is Mr Bubbles so it's understandable if people "misgender" her.
This just isn’t true. I have a male cat who people call “she” all the time. I never correct them. Occasionally I will use the word “he” at some point thereafter and they follow suit, but I never make a big point of it. All these concurrences make me feel like I’m on an alien planet, but that’s nothing new. But in any case, the figure may be 99.9% for all I know, but it’s definitely not 100%.
I never correct this, and I seldom see it corrected by others, at least in proportion to how often people assign gender to cats incorrectly. People who aren’t good with cats generally can’t tell if they are toms, neuters, queens, or spays, and usually seem to default to either “he” or “she” in all cases, or (more often) to assign different genders based on fur color (gingers are “he,” white cats with pink noses are “she,” etc.) or appearance (fluffy cats are “she,” british short hairs are “he” and so on). I think that shows a much bigger investment in human contructed gender roles than knowing and caring whether a cat is tom, neuter, queen, or spay.
You can easily misgender a dog, and the minute you do it, you will be corrected.
I paid $10k to fix my boy cat when he broke. They removed his penis AND testicles, crafting him a female-like urethra. Years later, a (different) vet said very gently, “Your cat? The one you think is a boy? Is actually a girl.” She wouldn’t believe me when I told her a coworker had made him trans years before, and we ended up arguing about it. I think she never believed me, actually. DUMB CONVERSATION, and also very expensive.
Wow, dumb vet. I woulda smacked her.
I was going to compliment the previous surgeon on the cat’s new swimsuit area, but then I realized that yes, this vet is an idiot.
I had a cat called Mischief who was equally misnamed. She grew to the size of a beachball although happily she lived to be, I don't know, 10 or 12.
Same. I also love cats too much so that's probably has something to do with it.
Without fail people always refer to my sister’s (18lb very male) cat as she and my little fluffy babygirl as he. No matter how much I correct them, they never stop.
This is probably gonna make me sound like a cat-crazy but someone misgendering my cat is like someone misgendering my child. It bugs me, even if she doesn’t give a crap. Same way my mom always freaked out when people use the wrong pronouns on me and I don’t care.
Without fail people always refer to my sister's (18lb very male) cat as she and my little fluffy babygirl as he. No matter how much I correct them, they never stop.
This is probably gonna make me sound like a cat-crazy but someone misgendering my cat is like someone misgendering my child. It bugs me, even if she doesn't give a crap. Same way my mom always freaked out when people use the wrong pronouns on me and I don't care.
Whenever someone calls my pet cute I always respond with "She is, isn't she?!" I'm proud. I don't care if she was born that cute, I still get giddy when people compliment her.
Wow, dumb vet. I woulda smacked her.
Whenever people say "oh they were neutered, they're not anything" I always retort that if they ever have to get a reproductive operation that renders them sterile, I'm calling them an it from then on.
Really, the only reason I care whether my cat is a girl or a boy is so I know if we’re potentially a risk for urinary blockage, since male cats do tend to be more prone to it, but I’ve certainly misgendered a kitten or two. Including one who got named Rosie until we found the wee hairballs. It didn’t seem to bother him.
Wallis Simpson was an American tho.