wheatknight replied to your post “remember animals don’t gender you, so they don’t misgender you. You...”
Biitch real shit? Im so worried my cats gonna like...not like me anymore after I go through puberty, since he cuddled up to "women" more
*deep breath before animal infodump*
Cats care much more about individuals than general traits; if your cat likes you now, he’ll keep liking you even if your body changes. When a cat is afraid of a particular characteristic, it’s using that as a heuristic measure to determine whether someone is a likely threat; for instance, if someone has a loud, deep voice and the cat has had unpleasant experiences with people with loud, deep voices, it will be more wary of that person because, in the cat’s mind, there’s a higher chance of unpleasant experiences with that person than someone with a high voice. If you acquire a loud, deep voice after the cat has already gotten to know you, the cat won’t care because its knowledge of you, specifically, will override that heuristic.
Also, people tend to project their own ideas about gender onto their pets. Animals who “like women more” usually like people who step more softly, perform fewer sudden movements, speak more softly, take up less space, are more respectful of the animal’s boundaries, and in general seem like less of a threat. These people, are, statistically, less likely to be cis men, since one thing cis men learn as they grow up is that they have a right to be loud and take up space, so they do. Or, like I said, if an animal has had an unpleasant experience with someone, they might use a trait of that person to predict future threats, but that could be a beard, a hairstyle, a size, or any number of typically gendered things, rather than gender itself.
