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>…”
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
