There are three dogs on the forecourt outside the Buena Park Hotel in Los Angeles. I mention this in passing to an effeminate man in white dungarees with a ponytail and a permanent smile. "Oh, really?" he screams. "Dogs? Outside?" Before I can offer confirmation, he is gone. I turn round to say something like "What's the matter with him?" and find the lobby almost empty for the first time in two days. Imagine a school bus breaking down outside an open prison for semi-repentant pedophiles. Several overweight American computer geeks, freaks and 40-year-old virgins, thighs rubbing together and saliva dribbling down their chins, have made for the swing doors. One man, overcome by excitement, is unable to walk and restricts himself to bouncing up and down on the spot making noises like a small woodland creature.

Most of those able to perform basic motor functions are carrying plastic bags containing pornographic images of cartoon animals engaged in several (often simultaneous) forms of sexual activity. Some of them are holding receipts for videos ordered from 'Animals Alone', an underground video duplication operation which, according to the brochure, provides,"footage of all sorts of animals (at least 95 per cent are mammals) mating, urinating, defecating, masturbating and giving birth. There are also genital close-ups and artificial insemination and semen collection scenes. Any humans involved are veterinarians, livestock handlers or fully-clothed bystanders." And then, among this excitable and high- pitched gathering of bespectacled Kwik Save shelf-stackers on the forecourt, there are the weird ones. They are known as zoophiles.

Almost everybody in the lobby at the Buena Park Hotel - the staff and the nervous man behind the Thrifty Car Hire desk aside - is wearing a laminate proclaiming fully paid-up attendance ($25) at Confurence 9, a convention for people who call themselves 'furries'. Literature available at the three-day event defines a furry as "any human who relates strongly, in whatever way, to the idea of anthropomorphic animal creatures [i.e.: with human characteristics]." It goes on, "This may involve anything from a person who simply enjoys viewing furry fanzines or films to those who actually believe that they are a non-human trapped within a human form." A roll call, then, of people who would be some way below Louise Woodward on a list of potential babysitters.

In the lobby, fursuits lounge around on the ample seating, and thin men with ponytails (the computer division) interact awkwardly with each other. On the mezzanine floor, on three long tables arranged in an L-shape around the stairwell, various delegates sell furry-related artwork depicting images including: a) a beer label featuring a male and female deer urinating into a barrel; b) a dog ejaculating into its own face; and c) a lesbian sex scene involving a cat and a mouse.

The artists have clear plastic folders with catalogue numbers for each picture. The potential buyer is supposed to flick through and then, as in a Chinese take-away, order the pictures by number. This is presumably to save the embarrassment of asking, for example, "Excuse me, sir, how much is this picture of a caribou in a spunk bath?" Given that the kind of person likely to buy such a picture is probably wearing a bushy tail in the back of his pants and holding hands with a bearded man adorned with a pair of false wolf ears on a headband, it seems an unnecessary consideration. As we move on, a 350lb griffin takes our place at a fanzine stall.

Meanwhile, on the eighth floor, the Furgonomics workshop is tackling the difficult question, 'How would you design a chair if you had a tail?' Retiring to the deserted bar for a drink (furries, as a rule, don't drink or take drugs of the non-prescription variety) I meet a Canadian called Terry Smith who is at Confurence 9 as Princess Tilenca, the Evil Unicorn Princess. It has been, [she] assures me, a great Confurence.

"We don't bother with any of the crazy stuff," says one of a pair of British furries nervously, suddenly aware that he has his forearm up a wolf glove puppet with Fuzzy-Felt teeth. When furries greet each other, they paw each other's backs like dogs wanting to be let out ("scritching") and make affable animal noises. The British are instantly recognizable because they are slightly embarrassed and intimidated by all the hugging and scared to death by the animal noises and sex stuff. Despite fitting the computer geek template (albeit with neither beard nor ponytail), the two twentysomethings from Kent and Skegness are at pains to distance themselves from the surrounding madness. "We met on the Internet," says one. "We didn't really know what to expect here," explains the other. "We heard there'd been trouble at the Pet Auction but we're not really here for that."

"Bestiality is a one-night stand... This is consensual sex. We have intimate loving relationships with our pets," says a charming and articulate young man hidden away in the bar with two fellow zoophiles, or 'zoos' as they are sometimes known. The zoos are the Praetorian Guard of furries. A sect within a sect, and not universally welcome at Confurence because of the bad publicity their behaviour brings. They are distinct in that they have no obvious personal hygiene problems, look smart and could probably hold down a job which required interaction with other people. The irony is that their sexual preference is for interaction with animals. This, then, is a rare interview with three men who sleep with their pets.