Love, loss and animals: a posthumanist account of dementia in multi- species kinship

In this chapter, we bring together critical kinship studies and the heuristic of a queer menagerie to interrogate love and loss across species lines. Drawing on the authors’ own experiences, the chapter explores how some humans negotiate life with an animal experiencing cognitive decline, and what this ultimately means for the boundaries of multi-species kinship. In reconstructing our reflective accounts, we engage with research on human–animal kinship, animals and dementia, and humans and the loss of an animal companion. Through exploring the multilevel disenfranchised grief associated with the loss of our dogs we foreground a critical kinship studies spotlight on multi-species households. This kinship centres love and emotions, and recognises the queer menageries created by humans and animals together.