Story fetish: Muskrat Love

I think all of us writers have our "story-fetishes," motifs we are fascinated by and come back to over and over, and lately I was thinking of an odd one I have: interspecies romance. I'm not talking humans with semi-humans (ie, vampires, Star Trek races) either, I mean one of them's a quadruped or something. In my mind this is entirely separate from "bestiality," since it should be an actual romance with mutuality and consent---and two different species. Maybe in my prudish youth this first emerged as the fascination of love divorced from sex, but since then it hasn't always functioned that way...

( Pointless parade of examples follows... )

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the slightest bit self-conscious that this stuff may be seen as kind of sick, but for some reason I keep coming back to it. I've always known I was just a little bit of a furre...