How did YOU become furry? =)

[ShemaFirekitten]

I became a furry when i was 8 turning 9. I was at a point where i started to feel hopeless and lonely. I would mostly spoke to my animals cause knew if they didnt speak they understood. I grew attached more to animals and wanted to learn more about them. I would meow and play with outside cat. Honestly when i look back it now, its like i turned crazy. But i drew myself as cat most of my free time since i didnt have games or Internet. When i finally got internet. I roleplayed with others online and made many fursonas. I relyed on the internet at that point because i had no friends

[Oanta]

I was first introduced to the Furry fandom itself with the CSI episode.  I didn't even know what they called it then, but when I saw people walking around with fur suits at an anime convention in 2011, I had that conception in my head.  Intellectually, I knew that it was wrong to use that one experience to explain the whole fandom but emotionally I couldn't get past it to really explore what being a furry meant.  Over the past couple of years, I have realized that there were some thins in my life that needed questioning and further investigation in order to make my own decisions about something.  When I started looking more into the furry fandom I realized that the stuff from the CSI episode is an outlier and the main focus of furries the love of animals and how one can incorporate anthro art into a persona that helps to define ourselves, who we want to be, or a character that we created.

Looking back at my life after realizing that I can consider myself a furry, I realized that it has been there all along.  I love the Animorphs books and would still love to be able to morph into different animals.  I watched a bunch of Disney movies and would use The Lion King as my unrequited love movie in middle school.  I have always respected animals and mother nature for the gifts that they provide as well as the power that they have.  I could go on, but in summary: I have always been a furry.  I just didn't know it until recently.

[Rob_Silvermyst]

I began my journey into my furry side back in 95, when I was 15, but my influences leading into it came from much earlier in life. I have always loved animals, and my mother always had pets. I loved watching cartoons, but even just as much loved watching nature documentaries. Wolves fascinated me the most, with not only how gorgeous they were, but how they lived, always in groups with a hierarchy, and the important roles of all of the members. I also had a love for fantasy and medieval things. I always went to the ren. faire that always followed the week after the Woodstock Fair on the same fairgrounds. Added to that was a fascination with the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt.

In 1995, I created my fursona, Robert Silvermyst. A young prince who enjoyed being among his people more than living a life of politics. As I built a story around him, I created a brother for him, Simon. I then began expanding and crafting a deep story around Robert, pulling influences from some of my favorite games, like Shining the Holy Ark, Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean and Ultima Online. In 1996, I found Furcadia. Robert was one of many characters I played as, but Robert Silvermyst was the one I stayed with while my other characters I either lost interest in or others had no interest in interacting with.

I began delving into MUCKs, forums, and eventually Second Life which is the more recent thing I've gotten into, though I rarely actually go out and about there. I've only recently started to get into furcons and furmeets, wanting to make new friends, though I'm a bit of a recluse with all of my school friends having left the state. While I am confident online and in roleplay, I'm quite withdrawn in real life and I'm trying to break out from that. Currently I'm working on a visual novel based loosely (very loosely in some regards) to my experiences as a soldier and adjusting to civilian life after leaving the service and leaving coming off of a deployment. It's a very slice-of-life with romance paths that delves into issues like post traumatic stress disorder, bi-polar, blindness, immigration, social conflicts and views over transgender and gay/bi folks, parental abuse, bullying and the like, yet will still be balanced and have some humor in it.

[Jwaper]

I'm still newish to the fandom. I love dogs for my whole life and even at the age of 7 I would either dream to be a dog or have a fursuit type thing (back then I did not know what a fursuit was but due to media and TV I had a mm idea of something like it). I really join the fandom back in 2013 because I loved the idea of fursuites. I have only recently decided to take action of my fursuiting love since the music video of one of my games includes a fursuit so that won me over and made me want more to do on the fursuiting and furry scene.

[Furnation]

I'm not to sure to be honest. I know I randomly was on 4chan and came across a furry thread. Everyone was discussing the conventions and what not, and I kind of liked the idea. Then some time later on I met a girl, who happened to see me browsing through photos of people in fur suits. Turned out she liked it, and ever since then I have been more open to being apart of the furry scene.

[Blaze]

For me it was when i started to get into games that allowed you to play as an anthro, i simply thought the character designs were cool and before i knew it i was looking up furry fan art and fursuit making or showing off videos in youtube and reading stories centered of furry characters and stuff like that.

[Element]

Obsession with certain characters (Bolt, or Disney's Robin Hood for example) lead to google searches, which lead to other places

[Galefargion]

Probably as a direct product for my love of anime and video games growing up. I always fancied the anthropomorphic characters, like Ouka in .hack//

[Flora]

I don't remember exactly. I just slowly started merging into the fandom I suppose.    This is just a guess, but I am pretty sure I had some sort of fursona before I even knew what a fursona was! Plus my sister introduced me to the Two Kinds comic and explained to me what a furry was.

[Riddle]

Saw a hate video about them on youtube, and fell in love with the furry fandom after that!

[Eesha]

Riddle : That's the best way 


Personally, I don't know, it became more official about 3/4 years ago, when I created an account on DeviantArt and watched Two Kinds 

[Booplesnoot]

I've seen quite a few "new recruits" of late. 

[Winnona]

It's odd; I have a very poor memory of my childhood, but I can remember lots of things that probably led me to being a fur.


Grade 1-ish, I had some plastic dinosaurs I would bring to school and play with with my oldest friend, who is not a furry, but we're still pretty close. Around Grade 3 I discovered the Guardians of Ga'Hoole book series, which were fantastic, even though the movie which came out years later SUCKED, in my opinion. Warrior Cats came after that, and I followed them up until the second or third book of the fourth series, since by that time I was quite a bit older.


Also, for a number of years, one of my friends and I would play cats whenever we hung out. I always played the black tom Darkstar; the star taken from the Warrior's clan-leader suffix, and the dark cause it sounded cool, and I was a big fan of Shadowclan. We stopped hanging out after she went to a different highschool, and we fell out of touch. If you're here, Danielle, give me a shout! I'd like to hear from you again.


In any case, fur-related stuff kinda fell to the wayside as I took up an interest in anime, and only came back into my life when I found Zoophobia near the end of highschool. I created a few fan characters and left them for a bit, and thought fondly of them whenever they surfaced again. Then I started going out with a guy who's sorta furry, and started thinking pretty hard about what sort of animal I'd be.


I love nature documentaries, ones about birds especially, but decided that I wouldn't just want to be a bird, I'd want to be large, and strong, too. I stumbled across the Utahraptor while trying to find an alt-mode for a Transformers Dinobot OC of mine, and decided that it was perfect. A few days later, I found this forum, and I am now proudly claiming myself as furry!

[Nazieri]

It all started when the topic arose on another social media site, asking the other members about their thoughts on Furries. I got a lot of mixed messages as to what the fandom was really about, so I took it upon myself to do a bit of research and I stumbled upon a youtube video that explained it perfectly. I started to realize that I was a furry. I am a huge fan of anthropomorphic art and I drew it quite a bit myself. As time went on, I got more and more interested, I started creating my fursona and now that I have it, I'm planning on making my own fursuit.

[Klyde]

I've thought about this alot in the past, and I believe to many people this will be a familiar tale. Of course at a young age I watched alot of cartoons where the characters were anthropomorphic animals, (Such as Robinhood, Bambi, Lion King, The Great Mouse Detective.... essentially all the Disney flicks), and was hooked on those movies and their characters from an early age. As I grew older the shows had changed but the majority of the shows and movies I sought had animals  for their cast. It was about ten years ago or more when I learned about furries and I knew right then and there that I was one and had been following the fandom ever since, but its only recently that I decided to get involved with the community.