For me it was at least 20 years ago when I started checking out deviantart and some time later Furaffinity to see some of the adult pieces by artists like RenaAyama, YumiAkiyama and others.
My main sona was constantly under development in my head through high school and eventually settled on his design that he still currently has to this day a bit after joining FA. His ref done by flossywolf. (Unfortunately they stopped being on here a long time ago. Last very brief appearance was in 2016)

Horny teen years during high-school found sites like macrophile with DNA's and Lizzimbas macro/micro works on them (having had some kind of awakening from "Honey, I shrunk the Kids" and probably other things too), and having found that was a short hop to things like transfur and FA where I lurked for a bit where I started picking up more kinks for TF, breast expansion and the like.

Had a couple of gap years at the beginning of university where the horniness had dropped off some and was just super busy in general, then in the last year/year & a half of uni started lurking FA and the other sites again, this time with age-verified logins as I "rediscovered" dem kinks, but was still too shy to do any kind of interacting. Started lurking some art streamers like Flinters, Tabykat, Mabo Corescant and Kaito Fletcher (at the time going by Oneiros~).

It was during one of Oneiros~'s streams where they were doing traditional art Pokemon TFs (I think based on pack openings even IIRC) after hearing their wonderful laughter that I got the courage to make a sign-on for the streaming sites and start chatting with peeps there.

It was also this point that I decided I needed a proper sona to interact with folks so I designed Dark based on elements from various things I liked (a quite heavy basing on Ozymandius from Dana Simpsons Ozzie & Millie (now Milo) webcomic with the tophat, vest, and though I didn't maintain it too well the zen-like attitude XD) Also instilled in him was my love of stage shows and magic and a much more outgoing attitude than myself since I wanted him to embody the things I never felt I could be myself. I made sure he was a nice simple "blank-slate" given I new I was going to use him to explore my various transformation based kinks.

At the same time I had that usual newbie desire to make a "sparkle-dog" super complicated character design just to flex the creativity muscles. And so at the same time I also designed Signe Ma, not that shi would get depicted to a fair bit later because I could never bring myself to inflict hir on an artist XD

Kaito drew the first ever picture of Dark "Puttin' on the Ritz" which served as my main reference till I got a real one from you as  Malware a few years later. He got his first set of boobs from  Flinters a couple of weeks later XD

Kaito also had the honor of drawing the first reference picture of Signe Ma when they insisted they wanted the challenge. Only one other artist has been inflicted with drawing hir and Bloo did an awesome job!

I've then spent the last 12 years collecting more and more kinks and getting progressively weirder and stranger and I wouldn't have it any other way ~ <3

I don't think I got my timeline quite right here, I may have spent a few years lurking from the end of uni before actively participating maybe?

*shrug*

Close enough

Didn't really start understanding what furry was until about 2007-2008, but I had been drawing and fiddling around with character designs and stories as early as 2004-2005. Hilariously, my first 'furry crush' was Colleen from Road Rovers ages before that so that might have had some play into how my involvement with anthro characters and designs took off later on. Definitely did consider myself a furry by 2009-2010 when I got my partial fursuit (at the time), and a year or two later the full body parts. However, in the recent decade I've started gearing myself moreso towards just being an anthro enthusiast and [E]RP writer / storywriter than being directly associated as a full fledged furry for a number of reasons. I still love the art and creativity, but going to cons and conforming to any sort of furry standard left a bad taste in my mouth.

Going back to the art-related age of the timeline, I'd say my first "anthro teacher" would have been Frisket17 on the original Deviant Art (before it became the AI cesspool of today). Her work was always so inspiring and tastefully clean that I fell in love with her work. She's since retired from anthro / furry art which was sad to see, but she definitely caught my eye and was great at inspiring me to push my art forward.

Today I write, occasionally maintain and clean my now 15 year old fursuit (gosh, to think folks drop thousands every couple of years on a new one boggles my fucking mind to this very day), and have devolved into a meme / shitposter for my furry and anthro friends I still try to (and fail at) keep up with and chat with from time to time.

All in all, I'm just a grumpy old man who's getting by. :P

Who was the first person to get you into the furry fandom? How did your sona come to be?
I graduated high school in 1993 and eventually ended up working at a RadioShack in Waterford Connecticut. since I was the Computer and CB guy I needed a handle. one regular customer casually mentioned that I was like Stray Cat. not really wanted by anyone, but I always show up, especially if here was food.

I've been straycat ever since. the 74 got added because it's my birth year, and the interwebs wouldn't allow names without numbers.

1997 I was working a IBM doing tech support for Thinkpad Hardware Warranty Help Desk and found 2, The Ranting Gryphon, and XianJaguar. been a fan of furry art ever since.
my initial sona was the F-14 Tomcat patch edited to say Straycat instead of tomcat.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/1155487/

only other thing I could add is that I was four years old when Garfield came out, and until I was eight I was convinced that Jim Davis was following me around getting ideas for his cartoon cat.
that's it. I'm boring.

Hmmmm it was around 2012 I believe, I was struggling with familial abuse and you welcomed me into your home despite us only having chatted online for maybe half a year? I drew and posted on deviantart at the time, and you suggested I move to furaffinity to hide away from my abuser.

So that's when I really started to draw furries!! I never had any interest in the idea before, but I loved "kimonomimi" so furry was only one step further lol

I have had like four different sona's? Mostly because I've never really thought myself as a furry so it's been difficult for me to attach to one as a "sona" per se

hmmmm.....how to answer

2006 met a girl online who had a wolf sparkledog sona. and she named me a lucario xD so thats how my sona got started! hence my old name here!


ove time i became a folf, then a fox, then the lovely bat ya see now!

Rolled around the idea of what i wanted to be till i made my first true one, my sergal lol.
Havent changed my main since. First few arts i saw was actually who i commissioned for my first ref, Shiuk.
Was mostly just browsing the internet for things and stumbled into it, then just started moving more and more into it.

The person who got me into the fandom was me. I had always enjoyed the concept of an alternate persona as an animal or creature growing up in the 90's. And it wasn't until 2006 when I got my first computer and very first taste of the internet that I discoverd that the idea already had an entire fandom.

Since I have many sonas now, I will just discuss my first one.

I think I was 11 when she came to be. At that time, I had extreme interest in extraterrestrials. And previously, I had always enjoyed pretending to be some sort of animal or creature of fiction. It then occured to me that I wanted a character of my own that combined the two.

In my mind, she steadily evolved until I was satisfied with how she looked. After that, I tried to draw her up a fair few times. But, in posessing no real artistic skill or patience, none of them ever felt close enough to what I had envisioned her to look like. To this day, I only have two surviving digital art pics of her that I can agree with(that are not posted here). And I gave up trying to draw her soon after them.

Her design is based off of mew and mewtwo. She is a four-legger with solid white fur. And I gave her brown eyes to match mine. I chose her home star to be Sirius(my favorite one). And she always had a story arc of coming here to Earth to show humanity the error of their ways and to push them into a better direction(i never wrote her story down).

Though she is no longer my primary fursona now, I do still cherish her greatly and am glad to have conjured her up. And though I could never saddle her with a real name, she will always be my most precious fursona.