Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Dutch animal shelter, I consider how veterinarians, animal caretakers, and volunteers affect, and are affected, in their interactions with cats. These are diverse modes of anthropomorphisation at play throughout the rehoming of shelter cats.

Paper long abstract:

Animal shelters define modes of human cohabitation with animals, particularly in urban landscapes. These institutions receive stray, unwanted or government-seized animals and aim to relocate them into human households. In this paper, drawing from my ethnographic fieldwork, I consider anthropomorphisation as a relational and ordering tool involved in the rehoming of shelter cats.

The rehoming process involves human-animal interactions and practices of neutering, socialisation and disease control aimed at reshaping cats’ bodies and behaviour closer to a domesticated pet ideal. Focusing on so-called ‘misfits’ – cats posing behavioural and medical challenges –, I will show how the rehoming involves diverse ways of understanding and evaluating cats, organising spaces, and forms of caring for individuals and collectives.

The analysis reveals how different modes of anthropomorphisation influence shelter staff’s reasoning and acting. For instance, animal caretakers classify newly arrived cats through a temperament assessment. The interpretation of cats’ acts has a basis in behavioural sciences, which restricts explanations of their acts and moods to a repertoire of behaviours. Meanwhile, volunteers take a more subjective interpretation and depend on their capability to affect and be affected by the cat’s actions during their socialisation sessions. These represent different ways that science, law, technologies and individual humans may come together in different modes of anthropomorphisation that enact cat sentience. Through these stories, I reflect on how anthropomorphism is inescapable and the importance for multispecies ethnographers to reflect on the ways it is used.