Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank) - Tomcat or Not
While in hiding, Anne describes one of the warehouse cats. The cat's name was Boche and was referred to as a tomcat. Well in her entry describing the disappearance of Boche, Anne calls him "her". It's not just once, but three times. I would think a 14 year old girl would know the difference between a girl and boy cat.
Quite often cats are referred to as 'her' whether they are male or female, as with dogs being referred to as 'him'. For some reason people seem to fit these animals to these genders. Even products such as cat food and dog food do this, so she may just be doing the same. It is a diary of her experience in the war, and I think that getting the gender of the animals right was the least of her problems.
Anne did not know that Boche was a male cat automatically. She recorded a discussion she had had with Peter, where he shows her that Boche is a boy, and says "Look, these are the boy organs." It was diary. She did not go back afterwards and change the gender discription because she had learned differently. And anyway, who looks for a slip-up in a child's diary? It's not a work of fiction, everything is what she wrote during her true experiences.
This is a simple translation error.... as far as I know, the language Anne Frank wrote in was most definitely not English. In Dutch and German (not sure about which is the original language), "a cat" is referred to in the female gender automatically, tom cat or not. There is a specific word for tom cat however. In other words, the translator forgot that the grammatical cat is always female..
I think it's absolutely terrible to be posting a slip-up from a child's diary, and especially something so trivial. I am a 14 year old girl, and I can't tell the difference between a male and female cat right off the bat. And like someone else said, you kind of naturally say 'her' referring to a cat if you're not sure. It just bothers me that anyone would pick on Anne Frank of all people over a slip-up. She was a poor little girl that recorded a very important part of history for us. She's generally regarded as a hero.
Once again, this is a diary, and when one is writing their personal thoughts for one's own eyes, who really cares how other people are going to interpret it? Anne Frank didn't foresee her own death at the hands of the Nazis, and the fame her personal accounts of every day life would posthumously reap. Also - just because we refer to "Jenny" as a tomboy because she likes to climb trees and play ball - does that make her male? Hardly.
Anne Frank wrote in German, AND she had started her own code in her diary so if anyone would open it they would see symbols and not be able to read it.
If you look at the first few pages in her diary you can see that although she had beautiful handwriting it was a little hard to read. So if she was writing in symbols and someone had to actually sit there and decode the entire thing and then change it into English then it is almost certain they made mistakes.
Plus do you really look under every cat to see the genitalia it has?
Under traumatic forced hiding by the nazis currently terrifying her country she may have forgotten this little detail, if it even is a slipup (see above).
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