ABSTRACT
‘Love is Complicated: Cat Care Compromises within the Home’ focuses more closely on otherthanhuman kinship and the cat–human relationships that form within the fancy. It looks at normative care practices and explores how cats can be lively commodities yet also valued as kin with deep intersubjective bonds and included in shared rituals. It also looks at the debates surrounding indoor confinement, caring for breeding queens, and the dynamics and interactions within multi-cat households. Through these differing aspects of cat care, the chapter explores the interconnections and entanglements that form between harm and care within the fancy. Cat fancy practices of care can be protective and nurturing whilst also being oppressive. The financial, genetic, and social value of the cats is often protected and prioritised above attempts to engage with an understanding of the feline umwelt and individual feline needs. This chapter shows how feline agency is managed and restricted in efforts to maintain perceived cat safety and ‘good’ cat care, at times contravening feline flourishing.
