>As a child I thought cats and dogs might be differently sexed animals of the same species.
Sounds irrelevant to the parent's point. Which isn't that you knew what a cat was (with regards to taxonomy or whatever), but that you could tell one from a dog or a fire hydrant.
Actually, recalling my argument in more detail I take back my agreement. The parent's point is that a child will be about to recognize big cats as cats, but dogs as not cats. My point was that as a child, this was not true. In addition, NNs can reliably be trained to recognize housecats vs. not-housecat in 1000 images.
Sounds irrelevant to the parent's point. Which isn't that you knew what a cat was (with regards to taxonomy or whatever), but that you could tell one from a dog or a fire hydrant.