My first interactions are a bit fuzzy, maybe high school circa 2016-ish. Zootopia and Beastars were vogue, but it also could have been a number of people I encountered on social media. There is one in particular that I have been following for quite some time who goes by the name @CheetahPaws who I found in 2019-ish, in freshman year of university. He is truly a contemporary renaissance man with fitness, modeling, photography, fursuit craft, dance, and a superb artist to boot. First I found his art, but by memory he was also starting to post about his fitness journey at the time, which I was also through dance, some light martial art, and from the positive experience in high school gym class at a fitness center down the street (I still do not know how it was cheaper for them to ship us all down the street three times a week and pay for all kinds of group classes??). All of these together gave me inspiration and drive for my own goals, and seeing his progress drove me to push a bit harder in my training each time. He was of course much more diligent in his training, and now years later is a virtual vision, embodying the style and impact of his art to the highest degree. Back then he was my personal fitness goal, and I remember thinking things like “you already look amazing?? What more could you want??”, but I know now that we all have different personal goals, and that comparing ourselves to others can be useful for inspiration and goals, but has the possibility to be toxic if we fall into an apples-to-apples comparison, especially for something like fitness that can easily be construed with beauty standards rather than being seen as an expression of positive self-work, with a drive to document and inspire others. In any case, he inspired my aim to find a balance of body positivity with useful daily strength/flexibility/agility, giving a philosophy that was very healthy for me at the time (re: anxiety, among other issues). With a pretty cheetah man and furry anime, my social media algos started to recommend exponentially more fur content of all kinds from that time on, driving my interest and connection to the community.

There was a certain attraction and kinship I felt to the fur aesthetic, as well as for the community and how well it aligned with my then burgeoning queer identity. Back in that dark age of high school, my relationship with social media was quite toxic, likely contributing to a good amount of mental health maladies. As I see it now, it had such an effect on me because I dit not use social media to be “social”, only consuming things for many years, seeing all these other people living their lives, pursuing their interests, interacting with each other on and off-line. FOMO was my mode of operation for this period, taking things in, comparing them to my own inaction, resulting in more self-negativity. However, this was not my entire experience, maybe somewhere between 40-50%, even though it had a greater impact than the rest. I found so many new interests, new subjects and things to study and explore, to blend with what I had before to create new ideas that were stronger than what came before. From the fur fandom to the many anime fandoms, and of course the remnants of Superwholock, there was discourse, ranting, raving, a balance of beauty and disgust. I am glad I was on those platforms at the time, as they made my interests feel seen and heard, to encounter some cute and/or sexy fanart or fic of that niche ship was so joyous, it was an escape from the anxieties of the time. It was also how I figured out the sheer feral energy of forging friendships with those in the same fandoms, it still felt like a new friendship, but with so much material to bond over it just seemed easier. Avoiding too deep of a tangent, I came to feel like a bit of an impostor in many fandoms, especially the fur fandom, as I did not (read: was unable to) interact with others. I did not have any sonas yet, of course no ref sheets, art, and of course no tangible fur. Of course, I know now that just wanting to be in a fandom is enough to be in it, and that is likely one the top things I would Stein’s Gate text myself if I could. But time went on, measuring our movement across the dirt, rock, and squishy bits of the planet.

Thankfully I did not have to wait too long for an injection of serotonin, as at my second year attending my local anime convention, I encountered the Pawstar booth in the dealer’s room. It was one of my first times alone at a con, as the seasoned con friend I went with saw my etherial attraction to the booth and promply remarked, “ew!! Furries!! I’ll be over there (but not with complete disgust, more like a matter-of-fact playful tone, higher pitch than usual – very much similar energy to one might quote a vine). It was transcendent to see such a volume of fur in person for the first time, the warmth of having this previously abstract thing now tangible mixed with the omnipotent anxiety of being in a crowded place alone, but what made it interesting was that this warmth almost matched and overcame the anxiety, something that had never happened before.

Fur partials I have gathered over the years. Only a few pieces but they are each very special to me. Clockwise, large purple and black fox tail, matching purple, black ,and green ears, then some black with green interior elastic band mounted ears, a samller tail on far left, mostly black with a smattering of colors at tail tip, and last at top a pair of headband mounted lavender and white ears
My fur partial collection up to now, excluding heads/masks

I purchased a pair of ears and a mid-size fox tail, affixing them to myself immediately. That feeling was nothing short of euphoric, vindication against the all too common anti-fur sentiment around me. The ears and tail just felt right, like they were always meant to be there but were lost for many moons. I strode about like this for a bit, finding my friend in the crowd, who spotted me approaching from maybe twenty paces. Their face contorted, then moving to then abscond at virtually the speed of sound, quite a feat for someone who subsists on goldfish and fruit water at cons (this is NOT shade, ILY Dear). I pursued, having to double their pace, feeling the weight of my tail balancing the dash, catching up to them soon enough. All they had to say was, “scared.” after which we went on with the day as usual.

At this point I did feel more fulfilled than before, to hold these things, feel what so many others feel in fur, even though the same toxic cycle of social media consumption continued. This went on for a few years, senior year of high school came and went, graduation, then my first year living in a city at university. Of course the same con happened both years, I even obtained a matching tail and ears set for a certain fur version of a closet cosplay

Myself posing in a contrapposto position wearing a mid-quality replica of Voltron:Legandary Defender Keith Kogane's jacket with my matching purple and black tail and ears, also with black skinny jeans and some heeled boots
Anime Boston 2022
(it was a Galra Keith cos for those who were initiated into vld hell) of which was also the first cosplay that strangers admired, giving a sense of validation I had never before experienced. This same level of progress very likely would have continued if it were not for being kicked out of my dorm after spring break of 2020 for the common reason such things happened at the time. At home, after the initial shock and such died down, I found myself wanting to channel my energies and interests into something, and now that I was forced to stay at home and only had a few online classes, the conditions were ripe for something to happen.

Isolated, wanting to reach out into something, I found myself making a fur account on twitter. The original aim was similar to my inspirations for creating it, fitness, sharing commissions, talking to other people in the community, but it ended up combining with some other niche interests to be adjacent, but not exactly what was envisioned. My feed ended up being a mix of fur, latex, transformation art, and miscellaneous kink related things, but the majority of it was fur related. I know not how it ended up this was this way, it may have just been that the furs I followed were into similar, and had AD accounts, which then branched to more of the same from their retweets and interactions. I was not necessarily mad about it, and even now I still use that account to post and interact with many communities that I love to be a part of. The real development that came from this account was posting lightly thirsty, post-workout pictures wearing nothing but some leggings and my $40 Snowfox head/mask from Spirit Halloween. It was not the promiscuous part of the posting that was of note, but the fact that I was posting at all, finially showing myself to the communities, who I am, what I am interested in. From then on I posted a little something maybe once a month, but what I didn’t expect was that people liked the photos, commented on them, and some even messaged me, a completely new, anxiety inducing experience (but like good anxiety this time?). I made online friends for the first time, it was freeing to talk to them about our common fur and kink interests, something I could not do with anyone I knew from my life on the ground.

I do want to take a slight tangent to talk of that Snowfox head, as when I got that, it was a certainly magical experience in and of itself. Going from my records, the head was purchased in 2016 at Spirit Halloween’s deep cutsale after the holiday, originally $60, down to $40, but I would have gotten it at up to maybe $80 as when I first saw them; stark yellow eyes that seemed to peer into my very being. Even though they sat on on old TV mount for maybe four and a half years, at which time I started that account, it was somewhat comforting to see those eyes watch over me in my bedroom.

Original eyes Eye modification using cheesecloth and marker

In the first draft of this I wrote in my journal, the next section was slated to be about two pages reviewing the gay furry webtoons I am reading now, but now that seems like what the kids might call “yapping”, but I do want to add in a bit about what they gave me. Webtoon and apps/services like it are quite popular, not amazingly popular with all artists for how they are treated on the platforms, but they seem to provide good exposure at the very least. I first found it in maybe 2021 when it was recommended by a friend who said it had a lot of good queer romance stories, one of which I found was the superb Castle Swimmer series about some mer boyos being gay and dumb together among other things. It is not directly fur content, I would say adjacent at most, but it was my introduction to the platform. It was not until late 2023 that I would find the gay furry ones, and when I did it was very interesting to get into them and their communities, as this was the first time I had found media that was made by and for furs. To those interested:

That is the history of the matter up to now, and I do still post on that account while also at least trying to connect with people who have similar interests. However I have been pondering something in the past couple months that I first encountered while browsing the sites around here on neocities. I found myself reading around the Alterhumanity section of one such site I encountered, and I quickly found myself enthralled, identifying with a lot of the things being covered. Going further down the rabbit hole, I read through all the information on that site, and started to consider my own being from the context these experiences and definitions provided, matching some with my own. As of writing I am not completely certain of my position among the spectra of kinship, but I do take comfort in having things available to help explain things like feelings of disconnection with humanity, a certain euphoria when I wear fur partials, as well as the times I feel what I now know is called (supernumerary) phantom limbs. I do want to note that when I started going on hikes and woods walks alone a few years ago, I did it because it gave a very specific sense of peace, but as I went out more there were other feelings that bubbled up the longer I was out there, and eventually I took note that a few times I felt a different set of ears tracking the noises from afar, so much that there were some times that I felt that if I did reach up I would grasp the all too familiar fur-clad triangular ears. I will of course be researching more on my own feelings and connections to these ideas, and hopefully mustering the social power to reach out to others in the community that have similar experiences.