Comment on It bothers me when cat memes refer to the pictured cat as "he," but I can tell from its coat pattern that it's female. I may know too much about cats.

• ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  See my other comment, the one with the emoji: yes, words like “tomcat” and “bitch” exist, but which is used for the species?

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  • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    In general the default for cats and dogs is the male form, though it can be ambiguous between male and don’t know / don’t care.

    For instance if you saw a random unidentified cat you could say you saw “un gat / gato / chat”, and it would be impossible to tell whether you were referring to a male cat or a cat of unknown gender (while if you used the female form it’d be unambiguous).

    Romance languages really could use a neutral form, but “gat@”, “gat*”, or “gatx” just don’t work when you try to figure out how to say them out loud.

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