What got me into it was writing a story about a Furry cat-woman character. It lead me to discovering Yarf, then not much later the VCL.

What got me too jaded to consider myself a "Furry" was the internal politics and the "lifers" who are too gonzo for me to describe.

Bucky O'Hare and Dinosaucers were the first cartoons that introduced me to the furry fandom, but it was actually an artist I stumbled across while searching dragons,  dharken that got me into the fandom. I've loved his work ever since, and that was quite a few years ago. :3 Things just went from there after that.

YES. FINALLY I find someone else mention this.

Basically for me, it was Looney Toons and Animaniacs and other cartoons, Tail Spin especially, Minerva Mink on Animaniacs was also partly to blame. However, I always though that stuff was cool, so when I joined Macrophile, and then Second Life, thats what really started me into fur. Of course I knew nothing about the whole fur community when I started.

^^; well... I'm 21 now... But what got me into furs was Samurai Pizza Cats, Biker Mice from Mars, erm... old school Anime/cartoons. Looney Toons didn't do too much to me. But I loooooooooved Animaniacs! After that, it broadened to more Starfox, video games, Pokemon, etc etc. ^^; Didn't know I was a fur until a few years ago in high school when someone introduced me to fA.

Well, I started during middle school/junior high with my "Kayla" character during class (was perpetually bored). Refining her over time and branched out to other characters. Influences were "T & J", "Looney Tunes"
and "Woody Woodpecker".

It was last year so...I was 13 years old.
I was introduced to it by my bf!  serena_fox
I stumbled across his myspace and it said he was "a little bit of a furry" so I studied it and then he told me about FA and here I am today. =D

Scutally, I've been headbutting any and all of my friends all of my life, but I never could understand it. I loved to bite, or at least chew on random stuff whenever I felt the urge (Like gnawing on my foot board). I just never connected anything until my freshman year of high school, and my first boyfriend figured it out for me. Although it took me about three years to figure out I'm a goat... Yes, I'm 17, figured I was different by the age of 13... I was 14 when I figured I was a furry... Also, that's when I found Furcadia... Been using that to try and figure out what I was... I lost my first goat, and that's when I figured I was a goat.

I've wondered this myself,^^,...

What got me "into" fur was probly my love of costumes and animals.When I was small I used to play that I was either a canine of some-sort or a bunny. Later on with my introduction to the internet,mainly a chat space called "Wolfhome",where I gained my "furname", Silverone.And eventually after a few years I came across the fur communitites and fursuiting.And I've been here ever since!

I'm now going on 20yrs of age and have been a self declared fur since around the 5th grade...

I was infatuated with Breath of Fire chars and Felicia from Darkstalkers, and my brother was the roomate of a great artist.

( Let me apologize ahead of time, cause this is a lengthy post..but you did say you wanted us to explain our history in find out about the community..*Shrugs*)

-hmm, for me to explain this, I'd have to explain my entire life to you.. I'm 21, my family actually noticed it when i was just an infant. All my life I've exhibited Canine-like qualities, even as a baby/toddler, My first dog, a Golden Retriever named Buddy was like my personal nanny/guardian, kept me outta trouble, protected me from our ignorant, redneck neighbors, and constantly escorted me around on his back. When I got to the age where I started to learn to talk and communicate with others, i'd always growl( various tones/depth, depending on the situation), whimpered, yipped, you name it and could eerily howl way too well for my own good, hehehe...

-from the beginning my family always toyingly called me a lil wolf, hellhound, etc. anything related to being a stubborn, young lil boy or dog, lol. I've always gnawed on various things, depending on if I was worried about something, deep in thought or just in one of those moods and bored.

I've always been a heavy meat eater, I liked vegetables and whatnot, but i preferred a diet of mostly meat *Shrugs* and my connection to canines and their wanting to follow and listen to me with such ease over the years made my family that much more curious about me, finally deciding it wasn't just a phase that was gonna go away after a few years.

When I got into 2nd grade, I started realizing I wasn't the same as other kids my age, I didn't ever feel comfortable, like something was wrong with me, I just couldn't pinpoint it, it's like, when you close your eyes and invision yourself, it's supposed to be like looking through a mirror, except for me, the face staring back wasn't the same when I opened my eyes and actually took a glance at myself.

Few years later, Road Rovers( Which I absolutely adored. The boxer that they would have in the straight jacket, all bound like Hannibal was my favorite of all chars), TMNT(Leonardo ftw, bitches), Street sharks, Doug(Porkchop was the shit) were my favorite cartoons of all time. By this time i was in 5th grade and really started messing around on the internet and had been roleplaying my "alternate" self, Titan for a year by then. Titan( Short for Titaniumwolf) was a big, tall blue furred werewolf, that inhabited MSN's roleplaying chatrooms, mainly "AA Wolfs Den" "Wolfs Inn" and "Wolf Haven". Around the same time I started noticing "Were" pictures and came across a Drawing of the Werewolf character from darkstalkers that was done by an Anthro artist, and that was my first run-in with the Furry community, after finding that pic, i started searching for more and more. I ended up learning alot of things about the community and myself, became more comfortable with myself when I realized I wasn't the only one, but learned that it's not something I needed to share with everyone, cause not everyone would be so openly accepting of that knowledge. (Found other sites like VCL, SA, Wolfhome,Furcadia,DA, and then, ultimately ended up here on FA, roleplaying on messenger with friends and on various chatsites once msn limited it's chatrooms to the users who were willing to pay to chat.)

Several years pass, The figure I saw inside changed as I grew up and changed as well, therefor, Titan, online changed to match what I saw, and a very small pack of close friends I now keep irl briefly know of my relationship with Titan, which to some degree the only reason why they accepted is cause they've had some sort of curiousity in Anthro's, Were's and a psuedo furry realization of themselves( one friend in particular is a Furry artist, who I actually ended up dating for a lil less than a year). The family nowadays has nicknamed me the werewolf of the family who has a vampire as a mother( Me and my mother live 3rd shift lives, i get called the werewolf, for obvious reasons, and my mother a vampire cause when she was younger she was "gothic" in nature before goth was even recognized as a style and culture, plus, of course the hours we keep) ssooo..yeah..now present day, you got me and Titan, I've calmed down alot of my quirks to kind of make it through everyday life without being stalked and bugged with millions of questions..but you get me in a comfortable situation..or just with a lil liquor and I'll go back to not giving a damn what people think and be right back to my usual self..lol

Once again, apologize for the length.. *bows*

oh wow... that's very interesting... in fact... I've known some people like you, and it's a bit more common than it seems to be

I'd like to talk more about this with you if possible ^^

I don't know, I have just always been like this.
It just seems natrol. =^^=

I've always acted more like a cat than a human.....then after I got older did I realize that I acted like a jaguar....mostly solitary, perfer jungle areas and darkness and such so it wasnt really a "stumbled onto" thing for me

Pretty much half of the cartoons in the 90s could have made you furry. Callie Brigs from Swat Kats, Renamon from digimon, Minerva Mink from Animaniacs, the list goes on and on.

i dunno exactly what got me into anthro artwork maybe it was a combo of cutey buuny wolfsbane rom the new mutants and omaha the cat daner combined.
i think o of my earliest pics was a antrho bunny done up as the scarlet witch wish i still had that pic i gave it away to a clas mte one day for some reason.

Like up there, it was Capt. Bucky O'Hare that got me interested in furry. I'd been watching Bugs Bunny and Disney cartoons before that show came about, but it was Jenny that fueled my adolescent hormones and drove me to find more animal people stuff. It wasn't until I was well into my teens that my best friend showed me Furry MUCK and introduced me to the furry "community" and fandom, and helped me find other people with the same interests.

Then he introduced me to Doug Winger, and it was all downhill from there.

in my case, it was at high school that I noticed I had some kind of inner being inside me... ok, it started earlier, but never paid enough attention to it

lions were my favorite felines, they look majestic, and curiously... they have an attitude like mine... lazy... but powerful if they mean to do something XD

I also loved feline girls, anime led me to that as I saw that felines were very attractive to me, cute and wild, that mix was very appealing and still is. The idea of stuffing the gloves to make them look like paws was funny... I saw more pics of catgirls like that and started loving them even more

it was at a convention that I realized I was a furry totally... there I saw a wonderful outfit, a furry catgirl, including the paws i liked and the whiskers, holding a battle staff, but still looked very human... which I really loved... yes, I like werecreatures... didn't know what furries were exactly until I found them on the net

I involved myself slowly into this world... then came to FA and I've been a furry since then... really... mixing animals and humans is very lovely...

well when msn chat shut down(you know that huge chat listing thing they had) I went looking for other chat things and stumbled on furcadia, wasnt taken with the furre idea at first but what can I say it grew on me

I was bored! ^-^

the potential cuteness :3 i like cute things :D

i descovered furry threw a friend who was one, and he played Second Life. after a yearor so i went looking for the game because it was a game you could littery do anything in. And i found it. thats where i really started to learn about furrys. (( i also knew about furrys because i used to read alot of scifi books and anime ^^,lol))
I watched for a long time before i made my own character into a furry....i guess it was the fact that so meany furrys were open to diffrent genders and just generally opened minded to things that attracted me to be honest.
I am Bi and was having some trouble in opening up about it. Then i met a fur who proudly declared " hay, im Bi too^^"
i guess it was general acceptance that made me wish to be a furry...if that makes any since. It was also the freedom of being whatever you wanted in a way. You make your own form.
and from second life i toke it in real life ^^ im very happy as a fur ^^ and the fur community that I personally know are open and kind people. The ones i know that is, im certain there are furs out there who are still jerks like in everyday life,lol.
but yea, i became a fur at the age of 19 ^^ and now im almost 21.
I hope this helped ya out ^^
*glmops ya and gives you a warm fluffy wolf hug and cuddles* ^^

M'Ress from Star Trek.