Whence the notion that cats are "she" by default?

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Have we done this already?

Where and how did the concept originate that cats are female by default? Is it just by feminine cultural associations, e.g. cat ladies, men:dogs::women cats, or that cats sometimes seem vaguely female in their behavior? Or is it a grammatical gender holdover, the noun "cat" being feminine in Germanic languages that still have three way grammatical gender.

Or is it their high voices?

I've just been noticing a recent spate of cat food commercials where they advertise that the food is as good as human restaurant food, and at the end they say "Surprise her with <yummy cat food brand that I don't remember>..."

[Malacandra]

Well...

[Ike Witt]

When I was a kid I always assumed that cats were female and dogs were male. I have no idea where that notion came from. Maybe it is because nobody has ever heard the term 'crazy old cat guy'.

[groman]

Cause boy cats are practically metrosexuals when compared to boy dogs.

[Antinor01]

It could partially come from Egypt. Cats were worshipped and the goddess Bast was patron of all animals but particularly cats. She is also depicted as having the head of a cat.

[guizot]

I just checked, and my cat is definitely male.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Probably because they're small and dainty and even when they roughhouse, it's not the all-hell-breaking-loose way that dogs do.

[Diceman]

Originally Posted by Malacandra

Well...

LOL!

Seriously, I think it's mostly cultural associations. Stereotypically, women get cats and men get dogs. It's a sweeping generalization, but it's there.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by Quiddity Glomfuster

Probably because they're small and dainty and even when they roughhouse, it's not the all-hell-breaking-loose way that dogs do.

It's odd, though, because unfixed male cats will do all the "manly" things you would expect, like fighting over females, patrolling their territory, and so on. Our four neutered males, while obviously not fighting over females, still seem to exhibit a "pushiness" that I don't associate with females, although my experience with female cats is admittedly limited.

Then again, gerbils and hamsters are even smaller and daintier and they don't have the feminine connontation.

[Muffin]

Put Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, or Halle Berry in a cat suit. What do you get?

Put Bert Lahr in a cat suit. What do you get?

Based on the above, I am glad that cats are female.

[jsgoddess]

Originally Posted by Spectre of Pithecanthropus

Our four neutered males, while obviously not fighting over females, still seem to exhibit a "pushiness" that I don't associate with females, although my experience with female cats is admittedly limited.

I've had the opposite experience. For some reason, I had mainly female cats growing up, and I tended toward females even later. But we ended up with a couple of neutered males as well, and they are the biggest marshmallows on the planet.

Currently, we have 8 cats and only 2 males. We had another male a couple of years ago. All 3 were incredibly snuggly and friendly. Only 1 of our females is that attached.

So I think that cats just have a wide range, independent of their sexes.

[panache45]

I recently mentioned, in another thread, that I have a cousin who really believes all cats are female and dogs are male. She thinks dogs get cats pregnant, and the cat has a litter of mixed puppies and kittens.

My cousin, by the way, is in her 50s.

BTW, does anyone have any real statistics of the gender of pet owners? I've known plenty of female dog owners and male cat owners. And many of us like both.

[Lissa]

Seems not to be a new phenomenon:

Bastet is female. The dieties associated with dogs, Wepwawet, Cerebos and Xolotl are all male.

[NJ_Kef]

Originally Posted by Muffin

Put Bert Lahr in a cat suit. What do you get?

A dandy lion!

[kanicbird]

I never heard of it except for cats that have both orange and black color (tortie or calico), since these colors are on the x chromosome, the only way to have both of these colors is to have 2 (or more) X's.

OTOH orange cats are usually assumed to be male, as a X orange- X orange pairing is sort of rare, but a single X-orange, Y has a much greater chance.

[Cunctator]

Usage in my family has always made cats (and indeed any other pets), it by default.

[Will Repair]

Aren't most cats female?

What is the ratio of males to females (for cats?) I ask since a male's territory will encompass several females' territories. Don't prides (of lions) consist of one male and all the rest females?

[Musicat]

Here's a weird idea. The FE in feline seems to be connected to the FE in female? When we hear feline, we think subconsciously, female?

[Chronos]

Dogs being considered "male" is easy. The first domesticated dogs were used for hunting, a male-dominated activity, and even the non-hunting jobs dogs get tend to be male-associated activities.

Cats, on the other hand, have as their primary job controlling rodents around where grains are stored. Has stockpiling of grain traditionally been considered a female task? I don't know.

[Thudlow Boink]

If I remember my high school German, the word for cat is feminine ("die Katze"). Is this the case in other languages in which the nouns have genders? (Which wouldn't answer the question; it would only push it back a level.)

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Thudlow Boink

If I remember my high school German, the word for cat is feminine ("die Katze"). Is this the case in other languages in which the nouns have genders? (Which wouldn't answer the question; it would only push it back a level.)

Not in Spanish (el gato) or French (le chat).

[Barbarian]

Your ideal dog (in that platonic form sense) is territorial, playful and aggressive -- all stereotypical male gender attributes. It's also larger than your ideal cat. Since both animals occupy much the same purpose and mental landscape, and we begin to understand these independent entities pretty much the same time we begin to understand the difference between the sexes, we sort the animals at the same time.

[Beware of Doug]

Similarly, your ideal cat is affectionate, languid, and fastidious - all stereotypically feminine traits.

[Alan Smithee]

Originally Posted by Chronos

Dogs being considered "male" is easy. The first domesticated dogs were used for hunting, a male-dominated activity, and even the non-hunting jobs dogs get tend to be male-associated activities.

This is an excellent point, and probably goes a long way to answering the question.

I've wondered about this for a long time. In fact, I have a distant, perhaps imagined, memory of being in pre-school and whatever the equivalent of the old Dick-and-Jane was that we used had a picture of a boy with a dog and a girl with a cat. Being, at the time, of an age when gender roles first become noticed, I remember feeling vaguely uneasy that my own preference, cats, was associated with the girl.

In fact, in the actual Dick and Jane books, Dick had Spot, the dog, for a pet. Didn't Jane have a cat?

Despite the fact that I remember wondering about this as a small child, I don't think I've ever put the question into words, or even been sure I was observing a real phenomenon. When I saw the question posted, I immediately knew what was meant, but I was a bit surprised to see that someone else had noticed it.

BTW, it is perhaps worth noting that although dogs are almost always presumed male, there is one exception: the poodle. Not only are poodles seen as female, depicting a dog as a poodle is shorthand in almost every animal comic-strip or cartoon for showing a female dog.

Also, although cats are presumed to be female in many contexts, "tomcatting" is used to describe prototypically male behavior. And although men are often called "dogs" (either negatively or positively) it is far more common to hear a woman called "bitch" (always negatively).

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Alan Smithee

Didn't Jane have a cat?

Fluff. Why I remember this after fifty years while being unable to recall the names of people I met five minutes ago is one of life's great mysteries.

[jsgoddess]

Originally Posted by Colibri

Fluff. Why I remember this after fifty years while being unable to recall the names of people I met five minutes ago is one of life's great mysteries.

Take solace, because I don't think Fluff was the name. I think it was Puff.

See? You don't remember anything! Isn't that better?

[rivulus]

I've just finished reading a handful of articles about the Victorian science and politics of the human body. A common concept that is often highlighted in anatomical descriptions of that era, which (inevitably) compare men to women, is the idea that women are physically more delicate than men -- finer bones, finer features, less strength, smaller stature, etc. Some anatomists went so far as to feature a suitable animal skeleton posed next to a human skeleton in an attempt to highlight sexual differences. For example, I noticed a drawing with a male skeleton posed next to a horse (a stallion, of course!) while the female skeleton was posed next to a bird.

In short, the matching up of sexually dimorphic traits in humans with particular species of animals has not only a popular but a "scientific" tradition, and it may be part of what's behind the idea that cats are feminine and dogs masculine.

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by jsgoddess

Take solace, because I don't think Fluff was the name. I think it was Puff.

See? You don't remember anything! Isn't that better?

Rats. I even did a Google search to check on it. At least a lot of other people misremember it too.

I should have recalled the National Lampoon parody on Dick and Jane, where Puff's name came into one of the jokes.

SPOILER:

From National Lampoon's Dick in Jane

See Spot.
See Spot hump.
See Spot hump Puff.
Hump hump hump.
Puff puff puff.
Come Spot come!

[Gymnopithys]

Whence the notion that cats are "she" by default?

Answer No. 1: Since tomcats are males, cats ought to be she
Answer No. 2: Since a cat is a pussy, it's got to be she
Answer No. 3, and the correct one suggested by Thudlow Boink: a legacy of German die Katze.

[Alan Smithee]

Originally Posted by Gymnopithys

Whence the notion that cats are "she" by default?

Answer No. 1: Since tomcats are males, cats ought to be she
Answer No. 2: Since a cat is a pussy, it's got to be she
Answer No. 3, and the correct one suggested by Thudlow Boink: a legacy of German die Katze.

Why do you believe that is the correct answer?

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by Thudlow Boink

If I remember my high school German, the word for cat is feminine ("die Katze"). Is this the case in other languages in which the nouns have genders? (Which wouldn't answer the question; it would only push it back a level.)

In French, and I think all other Romance languages, the word for cat is masculine.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by Gymnopithys

Whence the notion that cats are "she" by default?

Answer No. 1: Since tomcats are males, cats ought to be she

Interesting idea, but we don't do this with geese and ganders, do we?

Answer No. 2: Since a cat is a pussy, it's got to be she

I think we'd have to explore the origins of the various usages of 'pussy', and which came first. Did 'pussycat' come before 'pussy' meaning 'weakling' or 'vagina'?

Answer No. 3, and the correct one suggested by Thudlow Boink: a legacy of German die Katze.

Just to be clear, in mentioning grammatical gender, I was referring to Old English, which presumably had the same gender for 'cat' as German does for 'Katze' today.

[Malacandra]

Originally Posted by Will Repair

Aren't most cats female?

What is the ratio of males to females (for cats?) I ask since a male's territory will encompass several females' territories. Don't prides (of lions) consist of one male and all the rest females?

No, there are usually up to four males to the pride, and there are also nomadic males who haven't managed to get into any pride at all. Wikipedia's article on domestic cats doesn't support the assertion that most cats are female.

[Dr. Rieux]

Originally Posted by Muffin

Put Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, or Halle Berry in a cat suit. What do you get?

Pussy galore?
^ ^

[Gymnopithys]

Originally Posted by Spectre of Pithecanthropus

In French, and I think all other Romance languages, the word for cat is masculine.

In French some animal names are feminine:

une girafe
une antilope
une loutre (otter)
une souris (mouse)
une gerboise (gerbil)
...
most other animal names are masculine

When names are masculine, there's often a feminine for the female, especially domestic and some popular animals:

le chat - la chatte
le rat - la ratte
le boeuf - la vache (ox - cow)
le bouc - la chèvre (billy goat - nanny goat)
le porc - la laie (pig - sow)
le cochon - la cochonne (pig - sow)
le cheval - la jument (horse - mare)
un âne - une ânesse (donkey)
le lion - la lionne
le tigre - la tigresse

some don't have a feminine:
un zèbre
un gnou prononced (g'noo)
un écureuil (squirrel)
un spectre
un pithécanthrope
and most lesser known animals (don't be vexed )