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Can I refer to animals as 'them' instead of 'him' or 'her'? Die Katze draußen ist so Süß, ich möchte es unbedingt streicheln. I know that it's not considered correct but to me it feels even wronger to just assume it's a pussycat and not a tomcat. Would people actually mind if I do the more, ehm, to-me-logical thing? Does it take you out of what I'm saying, the way that reading "its you're cat" takes me out of a story?

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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

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