Racheal Harris is an author and researcher working within the areas of religion, death, popular culture and science fiction. She has contributed to a number of edited collections on topics including: Pirates in Romance Fiction; religion in James Cameron’s Terminator franchise; and, depictions of death and folklore in The CW series, Supernatural.

• Introduction Chapter One Humans and Animals: Living and Loving since the birth of the Pet Keeping Era Chapter Two Tattooing: As Artwork, Language and Narrative Chapter Three Memorializing Animals: Meaning and Mourning Chapter FourTaxidermy: Echoes and Imitations of Life Chapter FiveA Union of Forms: Taxidermy and Tattooing Chapter SixIn the Skin: Memorial TattoosChapter SevenAnimals Online: A New Frontier in Animal Studies?Conclusion

Harris, an author and researcher working in the areas of religion, death, popular culture, and science fiction, analyzes the mourning rituals that exist between people and their domestic pets, particularly how the skin of humans and animals is used as a site of memorialization, through taxidermy and tattoos, after the death of an animal. She discusses the bond between humans and animals in the domestic setting, the history of tattooing as a cultural tradition and social trend, the concept of memorialization and how it relates to companion animals, taxidermy and its use in mourning, the links between taxidermy and tattoos, the composition and aesthetics of memorial tattoo design, and the links between online image sharing of tattooed animals and the trend toward animal influencers on social media.