You're doing it wrong!

Just tell them you're writing furry porn first thing - it'll clear the deck quicker and you'll know your actual friends.

Bwa ha ha, yeah that would clear the decks all right!

Y'know, I've never written anything that would really classify as furry porn, and I can't say I enjoy reading it all that much. What I do like to read - and would like to write, one day - is furry erotica in which the sex supports the storytelling and characterisation. It's a challenge that's been lurking with me for a while now... perhaps I'll try it for my next Thursday Prompt!

Something like this?
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/17401483/
(no, I don't do a lot of furry porn either ... )

Ha! Good story. Frisky chakats... what's not to like?

Just setting the stage for what was to come. Glad you liked it (it and many little side stories were thought up/written after the main story so I'm adding them to the rewrite - it has been added to my in-work chapter/book three. )

"I'm writing a anthropomorphic novel about Trump."
"Really?"
"Yeah, he's the leader of the cats."
[ blank look ]
"Ever read Maus by Spiegelman?"

Bunners

Gah Bunners you made me laugh so hard with that! Maus is, of course, magnificent.

You do realize I lie in bed at night imagining the characters in my stories, right? So now I'll be dreaming of a mean and mangy bully of a fat cat, with tangerine-coloured fur. Thank you so much for that

I seriously doubt that Trump would have much time for Maus...

Yeah, I tried this with my immediate family once, after years of keeping my work and interest entirely to myself.

I wasn't excommunicated from the group, but I honestly do wonder how much damage I did to my reputation as a reasonable adult.

This is why we have the Internet. We can find that tiny percentage of like-minded individuals who appreciate our strange interests. The catch is remembering that out among the general population, the Internet's filter doesn't function and our strange interests make each and every one of us utterly weird in comparison to everyone else.

The world may scorn me but my Internet friends have my back. And I've got theirs.

I can sometimes send my stories to folk by saying that I write about anthropomorphic characters, or just stick with calling them 'fantasy'. Here in the UK wider public awareness of the furry fandom is practically zero, so very few people, if any, make the connection. If they did, and found their way to some of my FA favourites... oh, man. Incidentally my mother's partner, a guy now in his 70s, actually quite likes my stuff (well, mostly; he thought 'Tremble' was "a bit ripe", and how insanely British is that?) But he doesn't know the first thing about furry, and I'm not about to try explaining the wondrous diversity of this place with him.

Furry stories and artwork, and the community here, are important to me now. I'm not prepared to give them up, and although not mentioning my presence here makes me feel deceitful, I have already learnt my lesson good and proper. That happened a couple of years back, when I showed this image to a good friend, a bit younger than me who reads a huge amount of sci-fi and fantasy. I thought I was on safe ground; Rick Griffin only does tasteful nudity, and the image (with its caption) is very moving, especially in the context of the story to which it links. Oh boy, was I wrong about my friend! His reaction was immediately and viscerally negative. I felt terrible, and ever since I have avoided the subject with him like the plague; fortunately our friendship survived the incident.

And don't even get me started on my Kindle collection, stacked as it is with  kyell Kyell Gold's e-books. As you said – thank goodness for the internet, and for password-protected Kindle accounts!

Oh, and as an afterthought... the fandom may be small, but it's still big enough for its own publishing houses... I get a huge grin whenever I think of the publisher called 'Bad Dog Books'. Priceless!

its through experiences like these that we learn not to expect too much from our fellow humans.
or more sympathetically, that no two people find enjoyment in quite the same things.
and we simply learn not to expect them to.

compartmenalize our lives?

when i was growing up, school, parents, and my own thoughts required seperation.
once i was on my own, well you don't tell everyone everything because different people look at different things different ways.

but what i've learned, more then to compartmentalize, is just to avoid being emotionally dependent on others.

it would be nice to have friends you could be completely honest about everything with,
but the human social universe just doesn't work that way.

fortunately human is just a species, and earth is just a planet.
though away from humans, it can be quite a pleasant one.

and it doesn't belong to humans, just because they demand to think that it does either.

it belongs to rocks and trees, to all living creatures alike, and to unseen things as well.

So funny and so true!