Susy Buchanan
The definition of what a furry is depends on the furry you ask. Some Anchorage furriescite a spiritual connection to a specific animal. Others just enjoy role-playing.
The furries are amassing an arsenal and a dragon is preparing to breath fire.
This is the first annual furry Hunger Games, taking place in Mountain View under overcast skies. It’s the day after Halloween, and in the center of the back yard at House Kitsune is a table laden with weapons: rifles, a crossbow, pistols and a lone sword. Also a bowl of blue and orange ammo, five cases all told. Assembled for the festivities are a bird, a couple of foxes, a wolf/dragon, a cat/fox with raven wings, and other critters. They congregate around a charcoal grill where the master of the games, a cat who goes by Oni Kitsune, is preparing chicken wings and ribs dusted with cinnamon.
The air smells like kerosene and smoke as a few lonely snowflakes begin to fall. Some of those assembled have known each other for years, others just a few months, but they are all friends no matter what species they identify with. What’s different about them is in large part what draws them together.
Meet a few of Anchorage’s 150 or so furries, an international subculture that Wikipedia groupthink describes as those fascinated by “fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics.” Think Watership Down, The Secret of NIMH, or even Disney’s animated Robin Hood. Don’t buy the stereotypes of furries as Dr. Philfodder who sleep in dog houses and eat dog food, and don’t think being a furry is all about kinky sex in animal costumes, as other breathless media outlets have reported. Yes, they have sex, yes some like to wear costumes, but those two aspects are not inextricably linked.
The definition of what a furry is depends on the furry you ask, and is especially varied among Anchorage’s furries, who are not as cohesive as other communities in the Lower 48, where furry conventions such as Pittsburgh’s annual Anthrocon can draw more than 5,000 attendees. Some Anchorage furries cite a spiritual connection to a specific animal. Others are just expressing a strong affinity or enjoy role-playing.
“What’s the difference between a furry and a reporter?” Oni asks me inside House Kitsune (the Japanese word for “fox,” pronounced Kit-sue-neh). “We just have different accessories but we’re all the same. Some people are simply more in touch with their animal side and like to run around with ears and a tail on.”
The Hunger Games is just one of a series of monthly gatherings organized by Oni. He goes by a different name at work where he helps the developmentally disabled—but don’t call the 32-year-old father by his mundane name or you are likely to get clawed.
Oni and one of his two polyamorous partners, Goman Fox, own the four-bedroom home on Flower Street that has become Anchorage’s principal furry clubhouse. They host raves, barbecues and house parties on a monthly basis and provide a family for those who need something different than what they were born into. Some have rooms there, others just drop in, but all orbit around Oni’s bright sun. He’s charismatic, witty, a consummate host, and a born leader, although he doesn’t like to consider himself one.
Once the wings are nicely browned, Andreas the dragon makes his entrance. He’s all dressed out in his finest steampunk attire–black and red shirt, handmade jewelry and gadgets– and carrying a tub of supplies. The dragon hands the wolf/dragon (nicknamed Moose for his 440-lb frame) a fire extinguisher, just in case.
Moose, 38, is a night security guard and assistant manager at a storage facility. He’s also a wolf/dragon who is attracted to cats, a Christian Pagan and student of astrology, ancient psychology, shamanism and druidism. Moose has a lot of interesting animal facts to share, such as that dolphins masturbate by rubbing themselves on rocks, and that there’s a pair of gay penguins in a German zoo raising a straight penguin chick. Put two male gerbils in a cage and they will get it on, he says. And did you know that parrotfish gender bend?
Further conversation with Moose reveals him to be well read, funny, sweetly intense, and interested in helping the handful of non-furries at the House Kitsune party get in touch with their animal side.
“Have you ever felt a spiritual connection with an animal?” he asks me.
“I used to like unicorns when I was a kid.”
“What attracted you to unicorns?”
“Um, I just thought they were beautiful and mysterious.”
“Did you want to be a unicorn?” Moose insists.
“No, I just wanted to be their friend.”
“And what happened to make you stop liking unicorns?”
“I discovered boys.”
Andreas the dragon sips on a bottle of green liquid and belches fire into the clouds, creating giant smoke rings that float high above the neighborhood. Then Oni opens the ceremony.
“Let the odds be in your favor!” he pronounces. “Now go! Go!”
The furries, some in tails and ears, others in street clothes, rush the table of weapons, arm themselves, then scatter. The yard offers several strategic obstacles to use as cover. The raspberry bush is not one of them, Andreas discovers as he wrestles with the thorny stalks. War Fox crouches behind a couple of old washing machines. Bird begins attacking with his sword, suddenly at the very center of the action, no longer sidelined.
The melee continues for a good half hour.
Oni uses the grill for cover, then does a TJ Hooker-style back roll over the hood of a car—except sporting cat ears and a bell around his neck instead of a cop uniform. The entire crowd aims their weapons at him, and after a valiant fight he gives in, collapsing in laughter.
The Games are over and it’s time to feast.
Oni instructs the warriors to clean the yard of ammo, and then they gather in his garage turned playhouse (pole in the middle of the room, dozens of glow sticks hanging from the ceiling, well-stocked bar at one end) to feast on the wings and ribs he’s prepared, as well as cupcakes and Costco wraps his fellow furries have contributed. There’s a giant screen at one end of the garage, and after paws have been licked clean and beverages refilled, Oni pulls out a Dance Dance Revolution mat. Even though he, and many of those in attendance, had hit a Halloween rave at the Egan Center the previous night, they’re simply having too much fun to stop now. The festivities continue another eight hours.
Oni promotes his parties on House Kitsune’s Facebook page, as well as onakcommunity.com, a furry webforum he started nine years ago. The site was meant to be a uniting force among the furry fandom, but like every online community there are cliques and factions that are divisive. Even Oni’s cooperation for this story has drawn criticism from those wary of being ridiculed by the media. Oni frets about the rifts, but realizes there’s little more that he can do besides keep his house open to anyone who needs it.
And there are plenty that do. Nineteen-year-old Kurumi is smiley and bubbly and tends to squeak when she is excited. Kurumi identifies as half kitten, half fox with the wings of a raven, but she’s also a cello teacher and math tutor. She lives with her mother but considers Oni and Fox her surrogate parents. She asked them if they would adopt her the first night she met them.
That was two years ago when she attended her first furry party at House Kitsune the same day a good friend had committed suicide. “I wasn’t feeling myself, I was going through depression and thinking about doing something crazy, about hurting myself,” she says. That soon changed. “My first impression was that this place is weird,” she admits with a giggle. But as the night progressed, her mood lifted. “House Kitsune allows me to be myself and my mom has noticed that since I’ve been hanging around here I’ve been much happier,” she says. “They quite literally saved my life.”
The furries at House Kitsune are trying to do the same for Mr. Badger, who sits on the couch inside looking gruff and a bit pale in a tie-dye shirt and jacket. He’s 41 and has just been discharged from the hospital, where he was treated for congestive heart failure. He’s had a quadruple bypass, two heart attacks and a seizure, which he blames on bad genetics and too much extasy. His grizzled beard suits his muskrat fursona, and despite his failing health his cantankerous repartee with Oni is spot-on.
Mr. Badger has been furry for the past six or seven years, introduced to the fandom by a former boyfriend. He was an artist working in textiles before he got sick. Choosing his fursona was easy, he says. “I’m surly, territorial and ill tempered. Those are badger traits.”
And he does look somewhat badger-like, just as Oni has many catlike traits, as does Kurumi, who admits she is easily distracted by shiny things. Their fursonas, chosen through self-analysis, make sense.
For Mr. Badger, being furry is “not the first thing out of my mouth when I meet people, but anybody I spend a good deal of time with knows this is a shorthand expression of myself and my traits. I can be pretty prickly.”
That he’s one of the older furries in the House Kitsune circle is understandable, he says. “This is a relatively new fetish, a new system, and younger people are more likely to have an adventurous spirit.”
“Exposure and education are really key, the same thing for gay people,” he says. “When I was growing up being gay was not acceptable. Now there are kids in high school coming out. The transformation is delightful to see.”
He hopes that the more information that gets out about what furries really are, the more accepting mainstream society will be. “It is delight to see more press explaining furrydom to the general public. Obviously for some it’s about wearing a tail and ears and going to raves, as some do. For me it is an alternate mode of expression. It is much more ideological and spiritual rather than a costume.”
Mr. Badger describes House Kitsune as “a social place where you can be who you are and not face some knee jerk judgment one finds out in the world. If you are being an asshole people will tell you, but if you are just being strange, off beat, etcetera that doesn’t matter,” he explains. “You are accepted and loved for who you are, and that’s important ground on which to stand when you are looking for who you are.”
Oni is hopeful that continuing to hold events like the Furry Hunger Games—and his annual Thanksgiving feast which sees about 30 guests he considers family—will draw more furries out of their online squabbles and hiding behind computers. He would love to host a furry convention in Alaska (there are more than 40 such conventions worldwide each year). But the local furry community is too fragmented and too afraid to come out as who they are publicly. “Now is the time to step out and be yourself and be proud and excited and eccentric. Just be you. When you are proud nothing can stop you,” he says. “You may be different but you don’t have to be afraid—and if you are afraid come to House Kitsune.”
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