Oh, gosh, the little creature was eating! That was impossibly cute and all Al could do was stare wide-eyed at the soft, fantastic little hamster in his hands. All he wanted to do was snuggle her all the time. Oh, she was perfect. But he was able to spare some of his attention to look up at Sara and smile for her answer to his questions.
"It's sort of a neat practice." Designating ships with a gender, that was. However, it just wasn't neat enough to steal all of his attention away from the hamster. "You really like those seeds, huh? Yeah. I bet you're hungry." Alphonse was a little hungry, too. They were out of food at home, but he knew York would be back in the next few hours and he'd bring something to eat.
He always did.
Given sufficient time to play with the little creature, she would start to show she was tired and Alphonse would carefully extend her back out to Sara with a wide, pleased smile. "She's perfect, Miss Sara." Yes, she'd said he could call her just 'Sara', but he'd been taught to be respectful and he found it hard to turn it off. He'd figure it out eventually, though.