  While ethical challenges are widely discussed in HCI, far less is reported
about the ethical processes that researchers routinely navigate. We reflect on
a multispecies project that negotiated an especially complex ethical approval
process. Cat Royale was an artist-led exploration of creating an artwork to
engage audiences in exploring trust in autonomous systems. The artwork took the
form of a robot that played with three cats. Gaining ethical approval required
an extensive dialogue with three Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) covering
computer science, veterinary science and animal welfare, raising tensions
around the welfare of the cats, perceived benefits and appropriate methods, and
reputational risk to the University. To reveal these tensions we introduce
beneficiary-epistemology space, that makes explicit who benefits from research
(humans or animals) and underlying epistemologies. Positioning projects and
IRBs in this space can help clarify tensions and highlight opportunities to
recruit additional expertise.
