It’s simple, you use ‘der’ when using ‘the’ is appropriate. ‘Die’, on the other hand, is equivalent to ‘the’ and takes those places instead. Then comes ‘das’ which means ‘the’ and you can just map that to its English equivalent.
Hope it helps! :)
For feeling like you have to live in a German fairy tale. The cat one would be the Haustierbesitzerverbrennungsprozessbeobachtung, the other would be the Märchenschreiberangststörung. Silly, that’s German 101!
We äctually have a word for zhis, “Märchenbuchlebenswegbeschreitungszwang”!
The neat part about this language is that these words started existing properly at the very moment I’ve typed them out.
Now if I get enough people to use it so that they turn up in the Duden, they become entirely official.