Feeling furry?

By Sam Ward

Do you still watch those cartoons that have, for example, a talking rabbit? Or do you read an online comic such as VGCats, which is about two cats who game and about games in general? Or perhaps something more realistic, but which still has animals that talk or walk on two feet, animals you can’t find in real life? This may be one of the signs of being a furry.

Being a furry doesn’t necessarily mean you dress up in a fur suit and then have sex. Actually, this “common” reference to furries is not accurate at all. Toss out what you know about furries right now, because it is simply not true.

What is true about furries? Most are young adults, about 20 to 25 years old although some are older, and they like anthropomorphism, or animals that have human characteristics, such as bipedalism, speech, or show of human emotions. Furries tend to like to write, draw, and sometimes interact online in roleplay as some sort of animal representing anthropomorphism.

But how is being a furry different from being a “normal” human being? Other than the animal part, there really isn’t much difference.

There are furries who are very religious, who are bible thumpers, or Jewish. You also have ones that believe in some sort of god, or other entity. There are some who are complete perverts, ones that, sadly, the media focuses on, such as in an episode of CSI, where the case was an anthro raccoon that was run over.

There are also ones who teach students, and are damn good teachers. There are some who are lawyers, some who help you decide on your next house or help sell your current one.

Not every furry yiffs (has sex) or has a mate (swappable between being married and having a boyfriend or a girlfriend). In fact, outside of that one CSI episode, I haven’t heard anyone use ipecac and civet oil, or anything like that.

There are some who will not have any outside contact with “normals,” but those are ones that tend to be in the extreme part of the fandom. Hell, every fandom has people that will not interact with others not in their fandom.

We grew up watching cartoons of Bugs Bunny, Sonic the Hedgehog, Daffy Duck, and we still see it being shown to every child of every generation, and they are anthropomorphic animals, teaching values or entertaining our kids every time they watch the cartoon or show. There are comics in our newspapers, such as “Pearls before Swine” and “Garfield,” which entertain all ages, and on a wide variety of subjects.

There are some who still watch these cartoons, and still like the art, the writing or just like the idea of having animals who walk and/or talk like us. There are others who are artists, who like drawing comics of animals with human characteristics that entertain us. There are even some who write short stories or novels, talking about walking among normal humans.

There are groups of furries that meet multiple times of the month to just hang out and talk about the fandom, or play games, even party.

Furries are everywhere, and most of the fandom is integrated into American life, such as our cartoons, that can typically be found on television Saturday mornings or as comic strips in our newspapers.