TIFU by not knowing what a penis looks like

Submitted by nstav13 t3_119kkpu in tifu

As the owner of a penis, I've maintained a reasonable confidence in knowing what a penis looks like. This doesn't just apply to human male genitalia, but animals too. I've had several male pets, mostly dogs, but also a turtle who I had to read a book on how to sex, and I had family that owned horses. Furthermore, being a married man in my mid-late 20s, I'm reasonably confident in what a vagina looks like and have been for some time.

I, however, was very wrong.

My wife and I got married in 2016, and a month later we adopted a cat that we named Nala. She was thrown out by her previous owners who said they had her fixed but didn't want her anymore. I immediately got attached and called her my pretty pretty princess.

Fast forward to today and I not only have Nala but two other female cats I got spayed named Suki and Katara, a male dog we're intending on breeding, and 3 children (all boys). I still feel relatively safe with their sex, but Nala was injured in the past couple of days and we found large open blisters on her tail today. I took her to the vet and everything was normal other than the scratches. The vet took her to give her a shot to stop bacterial growth and any potential infection and comes back and gives me the news.

I don't know how to sex a cat. Nala is a male.

To say the least I was confused. He has a vagina! After several minutes of confused laughter and stammering I demanded to see the cat penis. Nala was flipped over and I was shown the urinary tract opening that I thought was a vagina. Nala grew agitated so I couldn't be shown more, but immediately called my wife on the way home.

As it turns out, cat penises when neutered look a lot like vaginas. The difference for a grown cat between male and female is about half an inch. The actual penis ends up coming out of the slit when aroused, but otherwise looks very similar to a vagina, other than being about half an inch lower from the anus.

Needless to say I immediately flipped the other two cats when I got home - much to their chagrin. Sure enough, there is a notable difference in distance between Nala's Anus and Penis compared to the other cats Anus and Vaginas.

TL;DR: I thought I knew what a penis looked like and have been misgendering my cat for 7 years. He doesn't seem to care though.

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-holdmyhand t1_j9n0rop wrote

>Nala grew agitated so I couldn't be shown more

I would have the same reaction if someone flips me over to check my penis.

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nstav13 OP t1_j9n0zgg wrote

Sounds like you should broaden your horizons /s

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NotoriousREV t1_j9uwk1k wrote

Honestly, it would depend on who’s doing the checking and why.

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lurking_my_ass_off t1_j9ntw0p wrote

Don't feel bad. I had a cat for years named Daisy. Turns out after a vet visit, his name was David. I was 100% sure he was a girl cause he was pretty much always getting fucked by the smaller cat that belong to a neighbor. Turns out he was a power bottom. He was a 19lb black cat. With massive balls I somehow missed. So I did what any real red blooded American would do in this situation and bought him the shiniest pink rhinestone color I could and let him go do his thang.

He eventually left to go live with his boyfriend. It's been almost 20 years but I still miss my gay cat.

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TheRealBobaFett t1_j9pwlqo wrote

That’s very heartwarming

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lurking_my_ass_off t1_j9s79p8 wrote

He was awesome, but who am I to stand in the way of true love? Least I never had to worry about getting him fixed. He was a giant lump of purring comfort, even though I thought I killed him by giving him the entire bag of catnip on the scratchpad. Dude was splayed out flat, laying face down in a pile of the green stuff, drooling his ass off.

Kinda hilarious that I adopted him from a friend when he was just a runt of the litter tiny kitten. He grew up BIG. Not fluffy, just a giant black cat who decided if he was going to sleep on you, you had no choice in the matter. I had him for about 6? years before he ran off with Vincent. (That's the name I gave the boy cat)

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2manyteacups t1_j9mu0ef wrote

the exact same thing happened to my best friend and her cat was also named Nala

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AcrobaticSource3 t1_j9mxvwb wrote

I assume that “and her cat was also named Nala” is an essential part of the sentence and not just extra unrelated information to the fact that you had to flip your best friend to see if they had a penis or vagina

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BirdyDevil t1_j9mxwju wrote

Yes, cats are very difficult to sex. Even more so when they're very young. And that's how I wound up with a female cat named Toby lol. She's never seemed to mind.

Most useful piece of knowledge I've gained around this particular topic is that if a cat is calico, they are ALWAYS female, or rarely, a sterile male. That colour pattern requires multiple X chromosomes so it's impossible to have a normally developed male cat with calico fur.

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zoinkability t1_j9n99cj wrote

My mom had a series of Georgina’s and such growing up because without fail they would get “boy” cats who proceeded to get pregnant.

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Vast_Reflection t1_j9n5ry3 wrote

Yeah, I did a paper in college about how calico cats and klinefelter’s in humans were similar

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claraalberta t1_j9oedgp wrote

When my cat Nara (like the city) was a kitten, I had a hard time trying to figure it out. He ended up being male.

I'm now having the same issue with our newest kitten Kazuha (named after the male Genshin character and the female LE SSERAFIM member). I used a gender-neutral(?) name on purpose.

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Galendis t1_j9v86l5 wrote

Technically untrue - you can have a male chimera that displays tortie/calico colours - they won't breed children like themselves as its a genetic fluke of two kittens blending in the womb but is possible

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BirdyDevil t1_j9w5cnn wrote

That is what STERILE means. Read my original comment again.

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Galendis t1_j9xiz8z wrote

No - sterile means unable to produce children, a chimera can produce children they just won't breed male calicos

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dainty_dryad t1_j9mpz86 wrote

  1. Suki and Katara. Great names. Great characters. Love the ATLA references.

  2. Had you never taken Nala to the vet in the 7 years you had him? How did you now know!? Lol

  3. Will his tail be okay? I hope everything heals up okay! My baby girl had an infected tail wound back in autumn and it was pretty hard on her.

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nstav13 OP t1_j9mrfdt wrote

  1. My wife came up with both names. I like AtLA way more and happily went along with it.

  2. We have taken Nala to the vet a number of times. They always called him "her". This was our first time at a new vet because we recently moved.

  3. His tail will be fine. Not infected or anything. He goes outside and likely got in a fight with another cat. The vet said it looked like another cat scratches abscessed and popped. It looks bad but he had an anti bacterial shot and has some medicine to help with the pain and irritation.

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thousand-grandmas t1_j9nwbo2 wrote

Now that Nala is no longer female, you could change his name to Naga. It’s similar enough, sounds “more male” (?) and is a Korra reference. Although Naga in the series is also female.

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okaymamajo t1_j9nn5al wrote

We have a black kitty/mini panther named Toph.

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Puzzled_Zebra t1_j9mylrt wrote

I knew someone who always wanted a cat named Lucy. Named a kitten that, then found out she was a he, so morphed the name to Luki. He grew up to be a chonker, and, though he didn't meow often, his meow sounded more like a kitten than a big ol boy cat. XD

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MikeWillis09 t1_j9o1ql0 wrote

Yo he started talking about penises. Then said he’s been married to a woman so he knows what a vagina looks like….

I really thought this was gonna be about either a transgender or a large clit….

Did not think this was gonna be about cats. This is why I keep reading.

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Lackeydaisical t1_j9pz3gu wrote

Same! I've had all kinds of animals over the years, so when a blind stray cat showed up on our property, I was comfortable securing it in a safe cage (my dogs are NOT cat friendly). I posted on the neighborhood site to see if anyone claimed it. No one did, so I brought it inside and started loving it back to health. It loves belly rubs, so I could easily check out the parts and see it was a female. I took her to the vet and registered her under her new name, Bella. Learned that day that she is a neutered male. Oops. His name is now Bello.

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Ariachus t1_j9qeda4 wrote

I definitely read that last part as you named the other two cats anus and vagina. That said i tend to have a gutter mind and I'm tired lol.

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beautypanner t1_j9nk7mx wrote

Didn't take quite as long as you, but me and my dad discovered my kitty was male after having him for some time

I had my theories that he was a boy earlier on, but my uncle said his testicles were his buttcheeks .-. And maybe something about his nipples? Me and dad got a confirmation he wasn't a girl one day upon seeing the little fuzzer get..ahem...excited And thus, Shania became Shane cx

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trollfysics t1_j9phhjg wrote

This makes me very worried that my cat might actually be a dude now. Time to go to the vet

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AllyBeth t1_j9pk60q wrote

I’ve heard a few other people say that they’ve struggled to sex their cats and that male and females look very similar but like… even when neutered all of my male cats have still had their empty, floppy little non functioning ball sacks.

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mittensonmykittens t1_j9r0vew wrote

Same! I can imagine it might be tricky as little tiny kittens, but I've seen many cat butts in my day and it's always been pretty clear if I'm looking at a lil set of balls or not.

Well, unless they're a long haired cat maybe. I had a long haired girl get a "sanitary trim" aka they buzzed her butt to prevent dingleberries and when she got home I was like OH, DAISY! I CAN SEE YOUR VAGINA 🙈

It was always fully covered in fluff before 😂

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th4tgothwitch t1_j9qfmmp wrote

>I don't know how to sex a cat.

r/brandnewsentence

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Sneakiest_Of_Sneaks t1_j9qzf2c wrote

Kinda doubt the cat understands the complexity of human genders

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nstav13 OP t1_j9rhxhk wrote

You underestimate this cat's intelligence. I question whether he's even a cat sometimes.

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shiveringsongs t1_j9rxvtp wrote

Too bad about Nala. But hurray for naming Suki and Katara!

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DressingRumour t1_j9qq8ls wrote

My ''female'' cat had to fall off a damn 2nd story window to be re-baptized as Nikito. Thankfully my second had not yet been named when we found he was a boy.

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Citizen-Kang t1_j9qvkt4 wrote

I think your wife knew you weren't well-versed on female anatomy when you told her breasts feel like bags of sand when you two were dating...

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xpoohx_ t1_j9sl5z5 wrote

My mom once had a cat they called Sassy who came to her as a street cat. She had a really big belly when thry found her (this was the 70s) and when they took her in all their friends would feel her belly and coo with delight because they could feel the kittens. Convinced she was pregnant every time my mom had to leave she would have someone cat sit in case she gave birth. Well 2 years went by and my mom found Sassy lying on the couch licking a big pink penis. Turns out all those kittens they could feel ans were ooing and awing about was just a fat ass street tom.

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ScarletteMayWest t1_ja6jvop wrote

Don't feel bad, my aunt had thing happen, she believed she had two female kittens and took them to be spayed.

Turned out Milly was really a Max. Aunt was rather offended. She only wanted female cats. (Aunt has lots of ... ideas about really weird things.)

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[deleted] t1_j9nlfx2 wrote

Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

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