Yesterday, I was looking at this website for some animal shelter, for a roommate who was interested. Well, after a while, I got to looking at their available cats on the site. With some of the cats, next to where it told their gender, some of them said they were "altered" saying something like, "female (altered)" or "male (altered)" for their gender. Typically, altered means changed- right?? Well, I applied this logic to the word in this context, and thought for a moment that these cats had sex change operations! And that something like "female (altered)" meant that the cat WAS a female, but had her sex changed. I was thinking to myself, "but who would to such a thing to an animal??- that's terrible!" After a couple minutes, I realized that it only meant that the cat had been fixed... what an idiot...
A childhood belief about cats and dogs
others believed things like this
- My sister and I thought cats and dogs were the same animal, the dogs were male and the cats were female.— Paul
- I used to think that to desex an animal meant to turn it from a male to a female or female to male.— Phil
- I used to believe all dogs were male and all cats were female. I still call dogs "boy" and cats "girl." — Kelly F.
- I used to believe all cats were female and all dogs were male.— Sabby
- I used to think that all cats were female and all dogs were male. — Annalisa
- i used to believe that all cats were female and dogs were male!Anon