How It All Began:

A rather lengthy story for those who would like to know how I entered the fandom.

It is often said that when a furry is asked how long they have been a furry, the correct and most spoken answer is, “all my life”, and for some even before that, but asking a furry when they found the furry fandom, well that is a story that brings nothing less than a warm smile and a twinkle to the eyes, not to mention a long and though unrehearsed, magical story.  That being said, I believe I'll be recounting to you the story of my life.

My story starts when we were moving into the new house when I was four; everything before that is a bit hazy, but having found our room in the new house on moving day, I set up the TV and VCR, which had been left for us, but not connected to power or each other, and my body's sister and I proceeded to watch Disney's Robin Hood.  We must have watched Bambi before then, but I don't remember it. It has been said that until the release of The Lion King, Robin Hood was the most popular movie for furries, and the fact that I was good at figuring out tech would come into play later, but of course we are far from “the discovery”.

For all of the time before preschool there was only my body's sister for a playmate, and as goofy as these games were, I remembered that I would only play animals during our games of pretend.  To me, there was nothing as meaningful as an animal; people just seemed physically non-pretty even if they were nice.

Obviously, we had several Disney animations, but the next one to affect me was The Rescuers Downunder.  I remember wanting to be with Jake so bad that since I could not have him in real life, I imagined him everywhere I went.  One such memory was in the line for school lunch, Jake floating in the air talking to me in my mind as we were bound by a loose fitting long chained pair of handcuffs.  In my adulthood, I have considered how odd this would have been to tell anyone else, but seriously, the cuffs were not a hindrance, but a symbolic bond.  I have come to understand that my imaginary friends were quite much more real than other children's for that age; you see, I could faction off my mind to not know what Jake or any other imaginary friends would be thinking.  Needless to say, it was funny when sentences would start off with, “Jake wants to know why-”  Care you know, I saw The Rescuers after The Rescuers Downunder, so until someone told me otherwise, I was always trying to figure out what had happened between the two movies to get to that strange plot.

I didn't understand sexuality or a solid understanding of love back then, so I didn't understand the ticklish warm feeling in my chest thinking about Kit Cloudkicker from Talespin.  I'll admit, things got weird for me; zoning out thinking about spending time together in positive and negative situations, and experiencing what I would learn is called heartache.

 Well even though this is a furry story, you might be surprised at the lack of non-furry stuff there was in my life at any point; besides from a few oddities like Mr.Bogus, Widget the World Watcher, and later Bump in the Night, I didn't watch non-furry anything: seriously, furry was my life.  This was particularly true for Sonic the Hedgehog.  

 I guess it was Christmas of 1991 that my body's brother received a Sega Genesis with the game Sonic the Hedgehog 2.  I was crazy about Tails of course, and went nuts when I discovered Archie Comic's Sonic the Hedgehog comic.  I didn't take note at the time, but thanks to my great care for my possessions, I have been able to confirm that I started at issue 00, and continued collecting them until somewhere after 2000, the year that is.  Again, I spazzed out when my favorite character appeared on  television in what is now known as Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM).  

Well, I don't think everyone would keep reading if I explained the impact of every single cartoon I've ever encountered, but as you can see, the presence of furry was always there, so let's jump ahead to the next stage of my life and the next leg of how I found the furry fandom.

Hello, Computer

On Christmas 1992 my body's brother received his first “real” computer for Christmas: a 386 running primarily MSDOS with a Menu system and Windows 3.1 which was selectable from the menu.  At the time I idolized him and saw his fascination with this weird TV to mean that it was important, and if it was important to him, it was important to me, so I dedicated myself to learning how to use it, even if I didn't understand what it was or what its purpose was; I knew that would come with understanding how to use it.. I guess.  

 In 1996, All Dogs Go to Heaven the Series was making its way on TV, and I had just come to understand that there was no such thing as a license to write, and although my first fanfiction was for Samurai Pizza Cats shortly after the series ended in 1994, it was merely a rewrite of an episode I had seen for the sake of having it again; remember, TV to video was not common then.  I wrote all of my All Dogs Go to Heaven the Series fanfiction on the program WordPerfect'95, a popular word processor at the time.  The experience is still very nostalgic because if I remember correctly it had to be started from DOS.  At the time, our 486 computer having windows 95 started with DOS, and Windows started with the “win” command, which was probably a custom setting.  It was a magical experience for me, finding this hidden place on the computer protected from adult criticism and judgment where my fantasies could blossom into something more real than just thoughts in my head.  When I got tired of writing I would end the story quickly and print it out.  I later learned the save function with F5 and load function with F4; this program was not very mouse oriented and had no menu bar.  Now, let me explain how wild this is: in 1996 I was ten years old showing interest in something that didn't even begin to make sense to other children I knew until they were around fourteen at least.

Enter Internet

 We had acquired the screaming modem god, America OnLine around 1993 or '94 I think, and I had played in AOL's chat rooms for lack of real social activity.  I do however remember coming across a website demonstrating how to make a cloth diaper for my Tails plushie, which was a popular thing to do because of his appearance in one episode of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.  I never made said cloth diaper for my plushie because for all that I can tell, that plushie was stolen from me, seriously, I've been looking for it since then.  At the time, I didn't know about search engines and wouldn't have found anything if it weren't for the built in search bar in AOL.  Once I would find a site, it was usually webrings that lead me from place to place.  I'd like to think that everyone reading this knows what that means, but for those who don't webrings were bordered off usually stylized links at the bottom of pages that could either take you to a list of sites relating to the topic of the webring or cycle through the sites in the list by use of the next button.  Samurai Pizza Cats was still big for me at the time, and I hopped from every site on the network of webrings I could find about it.  Little more than a shadow exists of it, but I was able to track down one of the sites I used to visit: http://web.archive.org/web/19991007125338/http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/4685/

 On a random chance, I woke up one morning in 1998 and turned on the TV to catch the second episode of the newest and most unique show I had seen at the time, Pokemon, and -needed- more information, something I knew I couldn't get from anyone else because the show was brand new.  Necessity, is the drive for education I guess, and I had discovered more about the web in a few months then I did in all those years before because of this simple need to know more.  It was also at this time that I learned what anime was, and how much I hate american anime companies for how they fail to translate the anime correctly, but instead alter it into a frankenplot of their own hideous creation.  Yes, I already knew they had done that to Samurai Pizza Cats, but I thought that was a one time occurrence.

 That was life till about 2002.  With new breakneck speed RoadRunner broadband, and my very own computer.  A mutual friend of my body's sister and I told us about Furcadia which became our afternoon geek-out chat.  Chelsea, my body's sister, has since decided that she hates furries because of the changes she saw in me after being exposed to it, but it's funny to think that she was in the virtual hub for the fandom at that time and neither of us knew it.  I chose a rabbit as my Furre in the game.  As you know, I am a kaline, a rabbit, but that has nothing to do with what I chose to be on Furcadia, I assure you: it has a deeper meaning.

 Dreamweaving on Furcadia was my first experience with programing, and although I never made anything that I put up on the game, it was again, another wonderful experience for turning thought into reality.

 In 2003 I started playing Neopets online, and somehow come across The Nice, a webring of webcomics.  First I was reading Namir Deiter (the only webcomic to not improve in it's 12 years of running), Tails from the Mynarski Forest, and Roomies which lead me to Macropod Madness.  Macropod Madness was the most influential webcomic of my teenage years inspiring me to eat healthier, exercise, and over all lifting my mood to get me through the day.  I have since discovered that it's creator Kelvin the Lion is into fat, this is ironic because I thought his constant references to fattening up was out of social satire.

And Then a Miracle Occurred

 Separately, I had discovered Fursuit.org, which taught me furry etiquette and terms, and I think I was starting to learn about conventions, but nothing exciting ever happened in my area, and I didn't expect to be able to travel so I didn't think much about it, other than wondering if one had to stay at the hotel in order to attend.   Then in October 2003, on Ripley's Believe It or Not there was a short segment about fursuiters having sex in suit on screen! (no skin showing of course)  Seeing furry on TV was something else, it meant that it wasn't so esoteric that I would never see it, and sure enough turning around and running a search for furry conventions, I discovered there was a convention in my city!  I had missed it by less than a full month, but for the rest of that year I made it known that going to that convention was all I wanted for my birthday, which was in the same month.  

 I reminded my parents at least once a month, and pointed out the hotel when we past it.  Funny enough, the one I pointed out was the wrong hotel: Mephit FurMeet was held at the Holiday Inn Select at Democrat Road Memphis Tennessee, and I was pointing out the Holiday Inn on Airways which did, interestingly enough, host MFM 2-4.

 Shortly before the convention, as in a week, my body's father and grandmother helped me to machine sew my first pair of paws, which looking back where kinda silly considering they didn't cover all of my arms, but I was insistent upon having them because I didn't want to be mistaken for a mundane. I did  hear some compliments on their construction though.

Friday September 3, 2004, after school, I was driven to the hotel by my body's father.  There was an awkward calm as I saw the cars outside some of which had plushies sitting on the rear window shelf, others from far away, and paw print stickers on some of them, but outside I saw no body.  Still unsure of what I would see, I walked up the ramp outside to the main doors which opened with a blast of pressurized air, and still saw nothing but a short flight of stares.  Ascending the stares, I hardly reached the top before having to stop and take in the sight of furries scritching unabashed, and a smile crept on my face with a breathless expression of wow.  

As the day went on, I opened up and still shaking with excitement realized that I was not alone.  All of those years feeling like an outcast for being so misunderstood were only so because the ones like me were not common in my area. I cannot put into simple words how meaningful it is after 18 years of looking at every other person on two legs as a stranger and possible threat, to look around and see no one whom I could not call friend.

Epilogue

 After my first convention I suffered the worse case of Post Con Depression I think anyone has ever experienced.  Like a dog seeing a rainbow, I had touched upon a connection to others that I had never felt in my whole life, and then like a dream it came to an end, and I had to return to the abysmal world so devoid of any such beauty.  It was so unreal, I sometimes looked at the pictures from the con to make sure it really had happened, but the convention came again and again, and I am happier now than I ever could have been without furry.  Furry means the world to me; it is to you I give my greatest effort, and from you I receive my greatest joy.  To any furry who has ever felt like they have tried to touch the life of a fur in vein, I say this: it is hard to distinguish one voice in a chorus, but I have heard you and felt you; Thank You.