This week (July 12, to be exact) marks the 25th anniversary of the creation of my first character on FurryMuck. I've always used that as my entry date into the fandom, as that was the first time I started interacting with other furries. The actual process of becoming a furry myself started way before that, however, so this is that story.
Growing up, I was always interested in animals. I liked books that featured them (The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling was an early favorite), and movies that featured them (I always tried to catch Dot and the Kangaroo whenever it was on cable). My imaginary friends were all animals. They were more or less the "talking animal" variety, normal-looking critters that could speak.
When I was about 11 or 12, however, I happened to see a broadcast of Animalympics, and that was my introduction to the concept of anthropomorphic animals. I was definitely hooked--the sorts of physical forms I saw in that movie captured my imagination and heavily influenced my thoughts and character design later on.
My macro tendencies were also starting to blossom during this time, and my interest in computer programming started up in those tween years as well. I remember writing programs in BASIC on my old TI-99/4A, simulated competitions in which macro furry athletes all strove to see who could be the biggest of them all. These competitions required competitors, and--along with shamelessly pulling in a lot of cartoon characters of the time that I thought would make good giants--I started creating some original anthropomorphic characters. Portia, the panther from Strange Attractor, hails from this time.
As I went through high school and college, things didn't change much. I kept writing those programs, and I enjoyed my little hobby that I'd invented. I never mentioned it to anyone else; it never remotely crossed my mind that anyone else would find it all interesting as well.
Around the time I graduated from college, I developed my interest in wolves. For some reason, there were a lot of wolf documentaries on TV in the early '90s, and I watched all the ones I could find. On one of those documentaries, I saw the story of a pack of wolves studied and photographed in a natural setting in Idaho. One of those wolves was named Mataki. I thought she looked quite striking, and I used her coloration and name in the creation of a new character that had quite the life of her own later on.
In 1993, I got my first inkling that there were other furries out there. There was a comic shop next to the college I'd recently graduated from, and I kept seeing a comic book titled "Wild Life" among all the others on the shelf. It stood out from the rest; there were fully anthro characters on the front in a setting and style that was closer to Fritz the Cat than Felix. I looked at it during quite a few visits, and it took a while to build the nerve to buy it (I had a bit of a crush on the woman at the register, and you don't wanna look weird, you know?), but buy it I eventually did. When I could finally open it up at home and read it, I was amazed to find slice-of-life types of stories featuring anthro animals, but I was even more amazed to read that there was a place called FurryMuck where people pretended to be these anthro animals. It captured my imagination, though it was a while before I got there.
Two more years went by before I got an account at my first ISP, Netcom. I lived waaaaaay out in the sticks at that point, and access was only available to me via dialup through a 1-800 number that cost $5 an hour. This limited me to only popping on for about an hour a day max (and having a $150 bill at the end of the month), so I purposefully kept myself away from FurryMuck, knowing that I'd want to spend way more time there than my finances would allow. I did, however, find avatar.snc.edu, an old furry art site that happened to have some work from a guy named Ken Sample. Mind Blown In Amazement, stage two. It turns out a few other people did find giant furries interesting. I spent a good chunk of each daily hour downloading Ken's stuff (sometimes the entire hour, yay for 14.4Kbps speeds) and learning about all the characters he and other people had come up with. I was no longer alone.
Then came 1996, the year I mark in celebration here. Over that summer, a local ISP opened up in the small town where I lived, and I pounced on the opportunity to have unlimited internet access for the same price each month. I realized I needed a character to use for FurryMuck, and I remembered enjoying a bunch of pictures I'd seen that showed a place there called the Room Temperature Banana Detective Agency. I thought it'd be neat to be a detective, so I came up with the name Zero Wolfe, a pun on Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout's literary sleuth. He turned out to be more of an inventor than a detective, but that's another story.
Being on FurryMuck allowed me to talk to other furs for the first time, and through it I met a lot of wonderful people that I still chat with to this day. It's been quite a ride since then. I've tried my hand at website creation, art, and congoing in the furry world with varying degrees of satisfaction, and I've had a blast exploring things I once only vaguely dreamed about through roleplay and writing. I am happy to have helped others find their place online, and I hope to be around to see what happens for at least another 25 years. Thanks to you for being a part of it!
