From a report on the Nintendo Switch Virtual Console release of Kirby’s Dreamland 2, which was originally released for the Game Boy in 1995:
Spotted by OatmealDome after being notified by their followers on Twitter, the description for Kirby’s Dream Land 2 — which was added to the service just last week — has changed very slightly, and it has implications for Rick, Kine, and Coo, Kirby’s three animal friends. The original text refers to the trio as “Rick the Hamster, Kine the Fish, and Coo the Owl”, but the updated text has changed this to “Rick, Kine and Coo, who look like a hamster, a fish, and an owl, respectively”. So Rick’s had his hamster status revoked!
I still have my original copy of Kirby’s Dreamland 2. I was a big fan of the game from when I first played it in 1996. While I cannot say why, I vaguely recall having thought back in the 90s that Rick, Kine, and Coo were not literally a hamster, fish, and owl respectively. The Nintendo Life article, however, says that the instruction book featured no such qualification. Where would I have read that they were not literally the animals they represented? A mystery…