Abstract

Pets are often considered to be friends or part of the nuclear family, and many pets are grieved when they die. But pets are also routinely bred in abundance, bought, sold, and euthanized when they are unwanted. The aim of this chapter is to suggest a way of understanding pet keeping in the light of pets’ paradoxical status between “grievable” and “killable.” It argues that the ambiguous conceptualization of the pet as an irreplaceable individual and as a consumable resource corresponds to a biopolitical rationale for breeding, buying, selling and killing pets. The chapter suggests that pet keeping can be regarded as a demarcated zone where biopolitical norms surrounding life and death can be played with, managed and reproduced.