Deleuze and Guattari attract much attention in the animal studies scholarship because of
their rethinking of ontology in non-anthropocentric terms and their concept of becoming-
animal in particular. Focusing on Deleuze and Guattari's assertion in A Thousand
Plateaus that “anyone who likes cats or dogs is a fool”, this article tries to show that
becoming-animal is more a way out from an identitarian ontology that revolves around
molar formations than a moral call for treating non-human animals as human beings or
with pity. The originality of Deleuze and Guattari for animal studies lies in the fact that
they point to a new form of responsibility in relation to becoming. This new form of
responsibility nds its clearest formulation in the concept of becoming-rat, which Deleuze
and Guattari develop in reference to Hofmannsthal.
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