Funnily enough, it already works like that, but it’s just too tiny to hit with a finger. Just tested it with my S-Pen

Element is a messenger and will never have the UX of Discord. There is Revolt, which is actually similar to discord but self-hostable

To be fair, some languages outside of English reserve “it” (or the equivalent 3rd person neuter pronoun) for “non-living” things. For people whose native language is one of those languages, calling an animal “it” may seem a bit too harsh even while speaking English.