My beginnings, as a furry, started as a child. This is common for most furries. However, I didn't try to make myself into an animal so much as I tried to be a part of the animal kingdom. I felt like animals could communicate and that most humans had cut themselves off. I still feel this way, and that I was given lessons in my dreams about how to communicate with the animals around me. My religion blessed me with an understanding mind and healing touch for the animals I would come in contact with, so I never felt a conflict between my religion and any experiences that came for me. If anything, I felt comforted knowing that what I had felt spiritually about my religion and about animals never contradicted one another. This is truth, when things like this confirm one another.

I grew up with the knowledge of who I am and how I fit into this universe. Every question I had I presented openly to be answered. I researched and learned many things, gaining my testimony of the truth of my religion. My connection to animals was one of those questions. How could I "hear" sometimes what a dog or cat or injured bird was "feeling". They didn't talk in words. They sent feelings and impressions and I couldn't deny what I felt from them. The scientists I talked to said that simply it was a matter of empathy, and me projecting my emotions on the animal. But I can't explain how I can put my hand on a dog, petting and concentrating on it, and then feel a pain in it's paw and pick up the paw to see that the dewclaw had curled up and grown into the pad. I can't explain how, when handling a dog that's hurt like this, I've never once been bitten. Even wild birds and mice have never bitten me when they feel I'm trying to help.

When I found the furry community, I was excited but also cautious. I did like furries, having loved movies like "Balto" and "Disney's Robin Hood." But I was worried about the openness about sexuality in the groups. I felt a special connection to certain animals, and so many people were portraying them as sexual beings more than the beautiful connection that I had grown up with that at first I was disgusted. Only through the gentleness of a friend did I come to see that there were others like me. Though many were and should be angry at the article from Vanity Fair, I was enthralled to see a meeting of furry foxes say that they didn't see the fox as sexually oriented as it's portrayed. I'm not alone.

Finding a furry identity was difficult. My connection has never seemed to be limited to a single species. When I was a child, I'd be drawn out in my dreams, out of a dark prison-like cave, through an underwater passageway to swim with the dolphins. Then back to that cave. Now, I wonder if the cave was my brain. I had my imaginary friends. A large black wolf walked with me, an eagle soaring overhead. They were my protectors. Small mice lived in any desk or locker I had at school. I carried them around and dressed them and fed them while the teacher droned on about some assignment I had already completed. When I moved more inland, my dreams with the dolphins were lost. The first animal I saw was a cougar. Soon after, I began to see foxes. I would go to the store or the movies and see foxes close. At times, they came within 2 feet of where I stood. This always happened when I needed help or an answer to a question. They were my messengers, my reminder of living free and loving everything around them. I will never forget the feeling from the kits that life is wonderful and full of energy and things to explore and discover. When I went to the wolf exhibit, the wolves would look towards me and I could feel their ache to run, then they howled for my fiancé and me as we left the zoo. A tiger always would greet me in his enclosure, complaining about the size and then telling me how he liked the rabbits that ran through in the larger enclosure. His mrrs and sounds were comforting to hear, but his size made me respect him. The lion who tried to smell me every time he passed me (I even moved to another area in the viewing "tank" and he repeated the process) was so worried about his mate being held inside that he wanted some sort of reassurance from me. My scent would have done, showing I'm not afraid and I was telling him the truth that they would bring her back. My nephew's rat who ran to me no matter where in the room I was because he wanted the secure feeling of my hands (though I'm extremely allergic.) In the end, I presented myself as human to those who ask. A human who feels that somehow I have a duty to serve animals, like all humans.

Still, people asked for a furry identity. I had been drawing myself as a fox for a while, but also as a wolf, mouse, cougar, and several other experiments. It was hard to focus in on any one form. Then I had a dream.

In the dream, the earth was dark. It was nighttime, and I was resting quietly. Then I heard a thudding sound. It traveled through everything around me. The plants, animals, earth, telephone poles, electrical lines, into homes where people lived. It called to them, bringing them to the source of the thudding. A large drum in a collection of tents, an extremely large tent in the center was making the thudding sound. Those unable to come beat their own drums in response, to help the message go on. I remember a young boy hitting his drum most specifically. Oddly, I felt no pressing need to come to the drum. I sat on a hill and watched the people go to the drum's call.

As I sat, a fox came beside me and smiled at me. In the odd way that animals have always communicated to me, he called me to run with him. I ran down the hill, playing on grassy knolls as other foxes joined us. I was human, fully human, as we ran and played and gathered. There were gray and black and white and brown and red foxes of every size. Fox species I didn't know existed at the time were there. Later, when I would research it more fully, I could find the different species, including the one that called me to join. The one that called me to join was a mostly black fox, his fur slick and thin, while a white cloud rolled down it's belly. I mistook it for a dog or strange cat at first until I saw red-foxes join in on the gathering and I knew all there were foxes. Except for me. I wasn't disturbed by the thought though.

Finally, we moved as a group towards the tents and as we ran inside the thudding of the drum stopped. Someone had been calling the foxes to the tent, and as I joined the foxes that had run ahead of me (human feet are so much slower than fox) I stood before a bunch of seated men. The fox "spoke" to me, telling me I was its voice and to speak for them. I repeated this, and the men weren't disturbed. They accepted it, and soon after I woke up. What I spoke for the foxes I can't remember. I was their voice, not their memory.

So now I tell people that the arctic fox chose me. It's not the complete story, but it's enough. They identified me as the fox that could speak in my dreams, but they saw me as a human who could understand them more than as just another fox. Often, I still connect with other animals and feel happier in those connections. As my mood changes, so a different animal connects with me to compliment that mood. Sometimes they create that mood. Still, when others ask, I am an arctic fox. In the summer, I'm in a dark black coat with a white cloud for a belly. In the winter, my fur fills out with white and I appear just slightly gray.

It is how I present myself. But it is not how I am seen. I am seen as the human who can hear.