On the Internet, in zines, and at conventions, "furries" express their affection for anthropomorphized critters.

By Julene Snyder

ALMOST ANYTHING goes at the Leash and Collar. There are viewing galleries, an exhibition room, and discreet servants who circulate offering drinks. The lighting is dim and red. The air is thick with a palpable sense of charged eroticism.

There's also a certain amount of purring, nipping, nuzzling, and licking.

So just who are these furries and what the hell are they doing, anyway?

The term "furry" has several definitions among the ranks of its fans. Sometimes used to describe the anthropomorphic animal characters themselves, the expression is just as frequently used to refer to those who relate strongly to those characters. The latter include aficionados who like to check out fanzines, films, and comics, collectors of figurines and stuffed toys (typically of a totemic type), those who long to be a "real" furry, and at the furry extreme -- those who believe that they are truly a nonhuman trapped in a bipedal body.

There are furs who collect plush toys (and some who go far beyond accumulation to emulation and copulation). There are furries who dress in full costumes ("fursuits") for face-to-face gatherings, conventions, and events. There are squeaky-clean furs and triple-X furs, artists who work for the big guns of animation and make the corresponding big bucks and doodlers who post their scribbles online with a shrug and a grin. There are online role-playing furs such as the above group in FurryMUCK and earnest furs looking for friends in newsgroups like alt.lifestyle.furry. They're everywhere, these furs.

When you think about it, it all makes sense. Furriness surrounds us in America. How else to explain the rabid collectors of Beanie Babies who give that irritating guy on the shopping channel? something besides knives to sell? Or Bugs Bunny's demon offspring, the frantic Tiny Toons? Commercials that feature Chihuahuas urging humans to follow tiny yapping dogs to a better way of life? And of course, there's Disney and its land, and its movies, and its mascots -- an empire practically built on the shoulders of one anthropomorphized mouse by the name of Mickey. We have seen the future, and it is covered in luxuriant tufts of fur.

While the concept of furriness per se hasn't invaded the consciousness of the average workaday schmo just yet, a simple Web search lists hundreds of personal Web pages, dozens of role-playing games, chat rooms, and fan fiction sites, a multitude of artists and zinesters listed, and most of these sites offer up dozens of other links to the vast -- and growing by leaps, bounds, and pounces -- furry network.

Although furriness means different things to different people, there's some consensus as to the genesis of the movement itself. According to YARF!, a fanzine devoted to anthropomorphic critters, furry fans coalesced out of science fiction and comics fandom to become an independent identity around late 1983 or early 1984. Landmark events in the furry timeline include the popular children's cartoon Kimba the White Lion, created by the Japanese animator Tezuka (who also created Astroboy), Disney's Robin Hood -- which seems to have had a significant impact on many furs in their childhoods -- and the wild success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pop culture is riddled with furry themes: Animal Farm, Watership Down, Howard the Duck.

Of course, you can trace the chronology of anthropomorphism much further back. Human-acting animals have been popping up in many culture's storytelling traditions since long before Aesop's fables. But today, as surrounded as we are by this cognizant animal imagery, what makes an artist, writer, or fan "furry" turns out to be solely a matter of self-definition.

"Some writers and artists who claim the term 'funny animals' for their subject matter don't necessarily consider themselves 'furry,' though on the surface this might seem to be almost a synonym," cautions the FurryMUCK Web site. "This is largely because of the baggage the term 'furry' carries with it, as a number of people see 'furries' obsessed with the sexuality of their fictitious characters." Hmmm. About time we got back to sex.

Take a walk on the furry side

There's a hot skunk babe on the cover of the latest issue of the American Journal of Anthropomorphics, an oversize glossy-covered zine designed to serve as a portfolio for contributing artists. The foxy cover girl has got the sort of bodacious rack that's ubiquitous in furry art: for some reason females are nearly always depicted as having oversize human breasts (yes, even cows). Vixens in halter tops and hot pants are also popular -- the latter, of course, with a hole for the tail to saucily protrude from. You can almost hear Jessica Rabbit breathe, "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

Among the hunky foxes, fetching bunnies, and groovy gun-toting felines, there are some more serious offerings in the journal: Eric Blumrich's bleak woodcuts depicting "The Fall" -- a tale of plague and woe enacted by wretched rats and howling wolves -- are harrowing and linger in the mind's eye like the mice and cats of Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning holocaust tale Maus. Shawntae Howard's character studies from a comic series called "Extinctioners" are beautifully rendered and fun to check out just to see how an animator's mind works. But some of this stuff comes across as just plain silly, like the image of a spaniel in the pose of a gumshoe, complete with a comely canine bitch perched on the edge of his desk, flashing (human-style) cleavage. It's like a tattered dogs-playing-poker tapestry gone horribly wrong.

Whatever the genre, the ways furs see and depict themselves and their characters vary widely. Still, wandering about FurryMUCK, you quickly notice when you "look" at people that most of them are totally babe-alicious. One "tall, slim, handsome young fox" has blue eyes, an ever-smiling face, and a "tangle of soft black dreads with beads and trinkets dangling around his forehead and ears." He wears "slim-fitting jeans shorts, cut off at midthigh, showing off his long muscular legs." Aaaaarrroooooooo!

A self-described "anthro fox" is also handsome (surprise!) with his red-and-white fur, black paws, black ears, a black tip on his tail, and "eyes a beautiful shade of gold-yellow." Somehow the magic is broken by his somewhat prosaic attire: "a black tank-top, matching shorts, and 'flip-flop' style sandals." One female "cat anthro" has ebony fur, and a "voluptuous dancer's figure ... as she catches your eye [she] returns your gaze with her own green flecked Mayan-gold rimmed black pupils ... which dilate slightly as she regards you." Meeeeeowwww.

Another she-feline is less anthro and more pure cat: "The delicate grace of a feline emanates from her subtle movements, from the lazy side-to-side twitch of her tail to the gentle heaving of her sides in breathing. Her form is covered in luxurious white fur that is streaked in random patterns with shiny black, fur so thick and soft to the touch it seems to envelop you in warmth even now.... Below her pure white tummy, you can see a hint of her nipples through the thinner fur between her hind legs." She and those of her ilk wander through the virtual halls and paths of the MUCK, furs in search of each other, each more foxy than the next.

Furveys and furverts

Ah, fursuits. It's not enough for some furs to log onto the Internet pretending to be a critter or to fill their house with hundreds of stuffed lions or teddy bears. For these souls, nothing less than constructing a complete suit out of fur and wearing it in public will do. An excerpt from the home page of the Fursuit Mailing List sums up the phenomena nicely.

"In short, a fursuiter is someone who enjoys making and/or performing in a fursuit. Great. So what the hell's a fursuit? Well, it's a furry costume. But we're not picky. Any kind of character costume will do, be it covered with fur, feathers, scales, skin, sequins (just don't go overboard), spikes, or whatever. Big Bird, the Phillie Phanatic, Barney the purple dinosaur, Pumpkinhead, and Goofy -- fursuits. Mr. Hooper, Tommy Lasorda, Barney Fife, Motörhead, and Al Gore -- not fursuits."

Brokken T. Wolf, 30, who lives in Milpitas, is unusual among fursuiters in that he actually makes money from donning furry duds. "I didn't get my first fursuit until I was 24," he says regretfully over the phone. "My family was very conservative, and I couldn't show them this side of myself. I was a reclusive and wolfish kid. One day I pulled out the yellow pages and found a costume store in New York City. I paid an exorbitant amount for that costume."

In the years since, he's delved even deeper into the netherworld of fursuits, joining up with some like-minded folks to form Critters by the Bay, a company that provides talented furs and their costumes for events ranging from special zoo days to TV-station promotions to sporting events. "I had no notion when I moved here that this is the fursuit capital of the world. There are at least 150 of us in the Bay Area," he says, hastening to add, "Of course, being furry doesn't necessarily mean that you're a fursuiter."

Brokken has a number of costumes, including a husky named Willoughby and a really sinister werewolf called Sawtooth that he designed to scare the bejesus out of kids at Halloween.

But mostly he puts on obscenely heavy and hot costumes for the sheer fun of it. "It's hard to breathe in costume, and extremely hot," he admits. "You can last anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, although some people manage longer. A lot of it has to do with how comfortable you feel with your character. If the costume permits it, I do cartwheels. Its hot but you are also living vicariously as that character, receiving hugs and having people tell you how much they love you."

The online resources available to those who long to construct a costume and become a giant animal are impressive. There are mailing lists, sites with tips on hiding zippers (a crucial step when trying to become an oversize beast rather than a vaudeville punch line), instructions on constructing paws and feet, and details on building customized heads. Photos of the various steps required to transform a nondescript jumpsuit into a real work of fabric-covered art abound. Fans offer up pictures of themselves posing with team mascots; a few describe the delights of fursuit sex play.

At the various gatherings of furries throughout the year, a good percentage arrive with fursuit in hand and attend dances and banquets in full costume. Some, like the folks in Critters by the Bay, get together from time to time to dress up and play miniature golf or drive around in cars waving at unsuspecting "mundanes." There's a weird charm in the idea that at any given moment a car with a giant-size Siberian husky will pull up alongside you on the freeway to casually wave a greeting, or that a huge snow leopard might be behind you in the checkout line at the supermarket.

Furever furry