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In Gentle Giant's song Black Cat it starts as follows:

There's a cat prowling through the streets at night

And she's black and her eyes are burning yellow

My question is: although said cat is referred as "she" and then the lyrics keeps it female, "...her eyes..." it doesn't mean it's a female cat, right? My guess is that in folk language "cat" assume the grammatical female gender, although it should be neutral, thus referred as it, according to many books. And, I'm also guessing cats are assumed to be grammatical female because in German we say "Die Katze", and both English and German are Germanic languages.

mkrieger1
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Gabriel Santos
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    Reading the full lyric it appears to me that the cat is a metaphor for a woman. The subject is unquestionably female, definitely hunting, but her purpose we cannot know. – CatchAsCatchCan Oct 10 '21 at 23:55
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    Do not try to generalize from modern German grammar to modern English grammar; both languages have undergone massive changes, including in the case of English two creolizations that have substantially simplified the grammar. – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- Oct 11 '21 at 04:25
  • Further reading at ELU (the link is to my answer to Why do so many female-specific words and phrases reference cats?, mainly because of the references I cite). This deals with the folk link between cats and femininity, rather than addressing the question directly but might be interesting background – Chris H Oct 12 '21 at 08:30
  • yes, absolutely. no doubt about it. – neph Oct 12 '21 at 20:55

3 Answers3

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In English, there is no grammatical gender that is different from biological gender.

However, there is a tradition in what you call 'folk language' of referring to unknown cats as female and unknown dogs as male. This reference is the best I could find, though I remember once reading that it was a Victorian convention (to avoid having to do anything as indelicate as inspecting the animal's genitals!)

I also thought of Mrs Chippy, ship's cat of the Endurance, initially assumed to be female.

Kate Bunting
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    Thanks, that's what I first though, I imagine this cat which prowls through the streets at night probably has it's sexual organ hidden from the lyric speaker, making it impossible to be identified as a female or male. And, again with German references, I think such tradition you mentioned has a relation with an ancient Germanic language which motherd both English and German, as in german we say "Die Katze" and "Der Hund". – Gabriel Santos Oct 09 '21 at 17:19
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    @GabrielSantos When a writer invents a cat, they don't need to inspect its sexual organs to assign it a gender. – Jack O'Flaherty Oct 09 '21 at 18:01
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    @GabrielSantos you mean this cat... probably has its sexual organs hidden... – Michael Harvey Oct 09 '21 at 18:09
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    The "derives from germanic gender" doesn't really hold up. Old English had "catt" (masculine) and "catte" (feminine) which referred to biologically male and female cats respectively. In Old English you have "sē catt" but "seo catte". Old English isn't the same as German. in Old English, cats are not always feminine nouns. Moreover "ship" (commonly feminine in modern English) was neuter in OE. – James K Oct 09 '21 at 18:15
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    @JackO'Flaherty I know, Mr O'Flaherty, I just said that for the sake of the argument. But, this prowling cat might be a real cat that used to prowl trhough the streets of Shaftesbury, England, the hometown of Giant's band member and writer of such song, Kerry Minnear. – Gabriel Santos Oct 09 '21 at 18:16
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    @JamesK thanks, I didn't know that. I should keep in mind that English and German aren't exactally siblings, but some sort of distant cousins. – Gabriel Santos Oct 09 '21 at 18:26
  • @MichaelHarvey Right, its has no apostrophe, well pointed and thank you! – Gabriel Santos Oct 09 '21 at 18:30
  • Would you consider adding the reference you gave to CCTO below to your answer here? – Dale Hagglund Oct 10 '21 at 23:03
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    I have to disagree. I think, just from general cat behavior, that the default assumption is that a cat prowling the streets at night is male - a tomcat. So referring to this particular cat as she makes it explicit that she's female, and something of an oddity. The full lyric would seem to fit this interpretation. – jamesqf Oct 11 '21 at 04:52
  • I'm not even sure that it's a Victorian thing to assume cats are female and dogs male. As a young girl, my wife thought that because her cats were always having kittens, but her dogs never had puppies... – FreeMan Oct 11 '21 at 12:44
  • @FreeMan - I meant that it originated then (as a polite convention, not a biological assumption). – Kate Bunting Oct 11 '21 at 13:00
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    The "all dogs are male by default" rule still applies in modern fiction. Go ahead, name a well-known fictional dog that is female and not just the love interest of some other male dog protagonist. Okay, now name one that isn't Lassie (who was usually portrayed by male collies in the show, but whatever). You have to think hard about that one because almost every other fictional dog is male, or some male dog's love interest. Not sure the "all cats are female" rule is quite as widespread as there are plenty of fictional male cats to go around. – Darrel Hoffman Oct 11 '21 at 16:26
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    Why does one say ''she'' when referring to a ship, in that case? It's not implied that the ship is actually female. – Hollis Williams Oct 11 '21 at 21:06
  • @Tom - Most people don't. Many sailors do, particularly those from decades or hundreds of years back, but most people would comfortably refer to a ship or any other conveyance as "it." Unfortunately, Wikipedia's individual ship pages appear to have been taken over by those same people. – Obie 2.0 Oct 11 '21 at 21:06
  • @jamesqf What you saying is that the prowling behavor it's a more of, although not exclusive, a male cat thing? I mean, to look for a female in heat and mate or maybe hunt some rats, bats or nocturnal birds... – Gabriel Santos Oct 11 '21 at 21:10
  • It's actually arguably kind of sexist. The word scip (meaning ship) was neuter in Old English, so it seems unlikely that feminine gender for vehicles is a holdover from the grammatical gender of Old English (nāvis is female, but the parlance of common sailors in the period when this practice developed was not likely heavily based on Latin). More likely than not, the practice of referring to ships with feminine pronouns is founded in one or more of a constellation of gender stereotypes (e.g., "since sailors are all men, anything they personify as a valued companion must be female"). – Obie 2.0 Oct 11 '21 at 21:23
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This cat is 100% a female.

There are no arbitrarily gendered nouns in English. The personal pronouns "he/she/him/her..." are only used when referring to nouns that are gendered by definition, such as male and female people and animals. There are a couple of rare poetic exceptions to this, like referring affectionately to vehicles as if they are females:

"She's a good ship and she has the right name. You treat her right and she'll always bring you home."

gotube
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    Lioness, actress, master, mistress, etc. – CJ Dennis Oct 10 '21 at 07:48
  • @CJDennis I've edited my answer to make it explicit what I mean by "no gendered nouns". – gotube Oct 11 '21 at 03:07
  • So there are no arbitrarily gendered nouns, except the ones that there are? – AakashM Oct 11 '21 at 08:51
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    @AakashM Those aren't arbitrary. In every case, the gender of the noun matches the gender of the animal or person. There is no arbitrary gender as in many other languages (for example German where the suffix "-lein" makes the noun neuter, most obviously in "Frauelein"). – Graham Oct 11 '21 at 09:11
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    @Graham I wasn't talking about the comments, but the answer. "There are no X [...] there are exceptions" – AakashM Oct 11 '21 at 14:27
  • @AakashM: In either case; no such of those has a biological gender (or biology for that matter) so it makes no difference. – Joshua Oct 11 '21 at 17:48
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    @AakashM The exception I noted is poetically calling a ship "she". I don't think you'd say "ship" is a gendered noun. – gotube Oct 11 '21 at 20:12
  • Notably, many ships that people still refer to as "she" also traditionally have a female name, e.g. Columbus' Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, etc. It's less commonly used on military ships which often are named after real historical figures, most often men (most dead US presidents have had ships named after them, for example, along with many other politicians and high ranking admirals and such.) – Darrel Hoffman Oct 12 '21 at 18:12
  • @DarrelHoffman My quote is from Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, talking about The Enterprise-D. – gotube Oct 13 '21 at 01:51
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Animals are routinely referred to as "it" if their sex is unknown or the author chooses not to mention it. If this writer has chosen to use "her", it's an explicit indication that it's a female. (I am entirely unfamiliar with the folk tradition that a prior answer refers to; I think a link to references would be in order.)

CCTO
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  • References added as requested. – Kate Bunting Oct 10 '21 at 14:00
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    @KateBunting Here's another "folk tradition" reference from a real sociologist: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/11/09/dogs-are-boys-cats-are-girls/ – MTA Oct 10 '21 at 17:45
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    additional note: people with unknown gender are referred to as "they", or "he or she"; calling a person "it" is very rude – user253751 Oct 11 '21 at 13:05
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    @user253751 So, if I come across a baby being hold by one of the parents and I wanna ask what's the sex, I should either ask: "Is he a boy or a girl?" or "Is she a boy or a girl?" but never "Is it a boy or a girl?" right? – Gabriel Santos Oct 11 '21 at 22:41
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    Well, there are certain cases where you can refer to a person as "it". An example would be when you load up Super Mario 64 and he says "It's me, Mario!" Unfortunately I'm not smart enough to figure out what the pattern is for when you can and can't do that. – Hello Goodbye Oct 12 '21 at 01:48
  • @GabrielSantos hmm. babies sometimes are called "it". I guess that is because they are too young to be offended :P – user253751 Oct 12 '21 at 08:16
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    @GabrielSantos - In this instance I'd be tempted to ask: "Is your baby a boy or a girl?" – Rounin Oct 12 '21 at 08:53
  • Perhaps the rules as to what is considered rude should be revised here: ‘it’ is such a perfectly innocent and neutral word that it is the perfect candidate for a singular pronoun referring to a person of unknown gender. – Michael Piefel Oct 12 '21 at 15:05
  • @HelloGoodbye It may be related to use cases where you can put "this is" or "that is" instead without changing the meaning too much. – Vladimir F Героям слава Oct 12 '21 at 16:44
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    The it in "It's me, Mario" isn't functioning as a normal pronoun: Mario is not the subject of the "it". English sentences cannot exist without subjects and when there is no sensible subject "it" is used as a placeholder: "It is raining", "It is late". This is called "prop it" (because it "props up" the verb as if it would otherwise metaphorically fall over!). You can tell it's a prop because "He's me, Mario" is just nonsense. @user253751 is right, calling people "it" is very rude and not what's happening in the Mario sentence. – Dan Oct 12 '21 at 20:00
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    Definitely avoid calling a new baby "it", especially to the mother's face! It's always pretty awkward asking what gender a baby is; it's even awkward asking about pets sometimes. I often go with "what's the little kid's/dog's/guy's (as appropriate) name?" and infer the correct pronouns from the answer. Slight note: while "guy" is slightly male-gendered it's vague enough these days that it's never caused offense before. – neph Oct 12 '21 at 20:52
  • It's also becoming increasingly accepted to ask "what's their name?" if the subject is obvious (e.g. you're holding/admiring/petting the subject). (again, as appropriate; please don't pet babies) – neph Oct 12 '21 at 20:54