My daughter wanted a dwarf hamster for her birthday. She was very diligent about the litterbox and feeding the cat in an attempt to convince us that was what she wanted. And therefore, we took a trip to the pet store.
Being eleven, she wanted a GIRL hamster. But the pet store only had BOY hamsters. After some discussion, I said “Sweetie, its a hamster. Its hard to tell if its a boy or a girl, and it certainly won’t care.”
So the hamster cage is PINK, the hamster is named Princess, and I sometimes forget and use the wrong gender pronoun.
I hope the poor thing doesn’t have a well developed gender identity. She is really cute.
We adopted by brother’s class rabbit when he was a kid. He settled in well, but it was when he began creating a nest and going through a pseudopregnancy that we had to reevaluate “his” gender.
I had a much-loved hairless rat as a classroom pet that was MALE. I always had trouble keeping a straight face when a junior high kid would take one look at Harry and say, “What is that?!?!”
I would reply, “He’s a male.” as many times as it took to sink in, accompanied by significant looks. We lovingly referred to it as his “luggage”.
When we got our ratties, we told people we’d gotten two boys. Several people asked if we were sure both were boys, so we wouldn’t have baby rodents running around in a few weeks. The only answer to that is to tell them to come over and see for themselves.
Rabbits can be tough to determine sex of when they’re young - and sometimes even when they’re older. I have two male rabbits that I got when they were 10 weeks old, and I took them to the vet within the week for a checkup and a just-in-case gender check. One of them required a whole lot of poking and prodding until they were able to definitely declare that he was a male, and this is a vet clinic that specializes in “exotic” pets; rabbits are pretty common, boring animals for their clientele. When I had him neutered at 6 months old, the vet told me he had the smallest testes that she’d seen on a rabbit. She had the discretion to not mention it in his earshot. I’m wondering if that’s why he’s at least a full pound smaller than his (same breed, same age) buddy and more slight in musculature too.
My daughter has a male betta named ‘Angela’. The only betta she could find that she liked was male but she was bound and determined that the fish would be named Angela so Angela he is.
Do you know how hard it is sexing birds? I named one Isidore because it would be easy to change the name to Isidora if it turned out to be a female. (Also because it is a Ringneck Parrot and I have a warped sense of humor.)
And when I was a kid I wanted a rat. My mother finally said okay, but it had to be a female, as she was embarassed by the size of the male rats’ …er, uh, genitals. I think Squeaky (yeah, the first pet I named after a member of the Manson family) was a female, as I never saw cojones on her.
I’m wondering if that’s why he’s at least a full pound smaller than his (same breed, same age) buddy and more slight in musculature too.