Caring for Cats, Caring for Islands: Multispecies Governance in Madeira and the Azores

Objective

As we confront unprecedented socio-ecological challenges, cats—cherished pets, devastating predators and rural mousers—occupy a central place in growing tensions between biodiversity conservation and animal welfare, particularly acute in islands. Drawing on multidisciplinary scholarship within Human–Animal Studies (HAS), FELIMAC asks: How do cats with outdoor access mediate conflicts between biodiversity conservation and animal welfare in insular settings amid rural–urban divides, environmental knowledge crises and ethical dilemmas? By addressing this question, FELIMAC moves beyond the apparent clash between environmental and animal care ethics through an ethnography of human–cat relations across urban, rural and natural milieux in the Macaronesian archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores. The project is structured around four objectives: (1) to theorise how multiple human and nonhuman temporalities underpin cat-biodiversity conflicts and inform identity narratives (national/insular) through native/alien classifications; (2) to explain how the dual pet/pest framing of cats unsettles governance practices across diverse contexts; (3) to develop a gender-aware analysis of feline colony management that challenges the cat lady stereotype; and (4) to design a participatory multispecies governance framework that integrates endangered species protection with cat care ethics beyond one-size-fits-all solutions. In doing so, FELIMAC will advance a groundbreaking temporal turn in HAS, combining environmental anthropology, political ecology, anthropology of time and feminist studies. Through innovative participatory methods such as deep mapping, it will generate a transformative governance model attentive to temporalities, knowledge politics and care emotions shaping human–cat relations. Finally, FELIMAC will realise my ambition to become a leading scholar in the environmental social sciences by providing a high-profile international postdoctoral experience at CRIA.