My friend had a a cat that as a human would have been a balding, neurotic man with a mustache and glasses. A very high strung cat tbh. His name was Mr. Pappy.
Because they are all fur babies. Always.
Because kitties are forever babies 🤗
because they stay smol!
You can call your cat anything you want, they still won’t come.
Because their real name sounds like a food pouring into the bowl.
That’s when you break out the tuna can. Try to see them resist that shit
He’s just a lil guy
I can hold onto many feelings and ideas at once.
My orange baby boy is an old man.
Mama Trump, is it you?
Generally speaking, the terms man and woman are reserved specifically for humans. I couldn’t tell you why, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
For pets, the use of boy/girl probably does have a lot to do with how people tend to infantilize their companion animals.
Additionally, the boy / girl terminology is often generalized to cover all animals, particularly when adults are interacting with children and by extension when children are interacting with each other. It’s not uncommon to have a child ask something like “is that a boy rabbit or a girl rabbit?” but it is a little unusual to hear an adult ask another adult that same question, unless it’s sort of tongue-in-cheek or maybe in the presence of kids.
I do call my doggo ‘old man’, but never just called him a man.
Adults would generally use actual adjectives, ‘male/female cat’ instead of ‘man/woman/boy/girl cat’
The only true man cat is Idris Elba in Cats
“And that’s where you’re wrong, buddy. Damn I look good.”
Fishy fishy
I’m gonna eat you little fishy!
Same reason I refer to my 14-year-old dachshund as a puppy.
Because he’s my puppy.
Human/animal bonding is aided because their faces retain neotenic features that remind us of babies. So many are inclined to relate to them like children.
From that article:
Accumulating behavioral and neurophysiological studies support the idea of infantile (cute) faces as highly biologically relevant stimuli rapidly and unconsciously capturing attention and eliciting positive/affectionate behaviors, including willingness to care. It has been hypothesized that the presence of infantile physical and behavioral features in companion (or pet) animals (i.e., dogs and cats) might form the basis of our attraction to these species.
It has been hypothesized that both behavioral and physical infantile features present in companion animals might form the basis of our attraction to these animals and may bear some part of the responsibility for our motivational drive to pet-keeping and pet-caretaking (Archer, 1997).
That’s weird because babies are ugly. Cats, on the other hand, are just so… hey wait a minute, my cat stole my heart 💘😼
This spell, so potent… 😍🐈
I think this might be a case of cart-before-horse. It seems obvious to me that domesticated animals have these traits because they were selected for by our ancestors, not the other way around.
That’s true for dogs, less so for cats. It’s also immaterial since we’re talking about present attitudes toward pets.
I feel like the factors that shape our drive towards cuteness and what we find cute are not immaterial to our present attitudes towards pets… but no doubt you’re right to point out that there can be more than one factor at play.
Not a lot of cats grow to be 18 years old.
Boy and girl cats grow up??
They do? Who does this? I’d say ask them.
I use the terms “male” and “female”.
My cats are gentlemen and ladies
I only have one lady. The rest I call terrible names.
Oh I call them like 100 terrible names as well but they are still nobles without rank or title
