usually not. You need to guess either cat or tomcat, that designates a grammatical sex. All references are based on grammatical sex. It is strongly emphasized t

usually not. You need to guess either cat or tomcat, that designates a grammatical sex. All references are based on grammatical sex. It is strongly emphasized that a grammatical sex is not the same thing as a natural sex. It is ok to guess the sex of an animal wrong. The same way nobody (should) cares whether an infant is a boy or a girl. You can enforce to be neutral be refering to "das Tier" and "das Kind". But since it is just a grammatical sex, why should anyone bother? There are some culturally assumed defaults: * a nurse is assumed to be feminine, unless the distinction is important * a cat is assumed to be feminine, unless the distinction is important