This post was written for the July 2026 Midway Menagerie, where the theme is "Fandom and Community".

I always love asking furries how they ended up in the community. Was there a particular piece of media that pulled them in? Did a friend drag them to a con? Did they find the fandom at a young age, or did it take time? How much do they engage in online vs IRL community? How long did it take to transition from engaging privately to engaging in community¹? To what extend do they even identify as a furry²?

I like asking these questions because I'm fairly new to the community myself. It was only January 2025--about a year and a half ago as I'm writing this--that I adopted the label, after attending my first fur con. I didn't really consider myself a furry before then. I was curious, and probably would have accepted "furry-adjacent", but I never had a phase of being fully invested in furry without also engaging in furry community--unlike many of my friends, some of whom spent years as a closet fur. Online community and social media have never worked for me, so it took meeting someone at a party to find my entry point.

I also like asking folks this question because I think it reveals something about what furry identity and furry community mean to them. Because it wasn't the media or art that pulled me in; it was the people I met. For me, furry isn't really about the animals; it's about the people.

What do I mean by that? I have some art of myself in a cat shape, and I've always felt a certain affinity toward cats, but I don't identify strongly with my fursona in the way some friends do. I have friends whose relationship with their sense of self, body, and fursona remind me a lot of my experience of gender pre-transition. To them, their fursona is who they are--canonically. My relationship with my fursona--to the extent I even have one--isn't nearly that powerful.

To explain what I love about the furry community, I'll defer to what I wrote for the Anville website:

If you're part of the furry community, then you know: we look out for each other. We fund each other's healthcare. We house each other. We show up for one another.

Furries value artists; we have our own economy that respects the work of creatives and cares about compensating them, which is especially important right now.

Furries accept each other as we are, because the diversity of identities that intersect in this community mean that we know what it's like to be pushed to the margins.

The furries are shockingly well-connected. I'd like to think I had a fairly active social life before finding the furry community. But after? It absolutely exploded. The number of furry meetups, club nights, and events in my mid-sized city is dizzying, and friends who are new to the local community report the same experience. I've even dipped my toe into community organizing with Anville.

To expand on my experience with furry community, I'd like to talk about one event in particular.

There's a monthly furry meetup at a brewery in my city, which over the past year and a half has become the nexus of furry community for me; we generally see 20-40 folks each month, and at this point I know most of the regulars. I always look forward to seeing my friends, and they're excited to see me too! Making this meetup every month is a high priority for me; in the past 18 months I've only missed one.

For as much as I love this meetup, it wasn't always a good time. I really struggled to integrate myself into the group, which is unfortunately typical for a Lark entering new social contexts. Coming in, it felt like everyone already knew each other, and had for years. Folks knew what to talk about, caught up, shared inside jokes… they belonged there. I certainly didn't feel that way. I've never been great at driving conversations with people I don't know well, and inserting yourself into others' conversations runs the risk of being rude and disruptive.

There were several months I left early and walked home in tears. It feels embarrassing to admit that in a blog post I'm sharing with these same friends; it's not like anyone was being mean or deliberately excluding me. Having the kind of relationship with the group that I enjoy now simply felt unattainable, and that's a problem that it took me a full twelve months to crack. I started attending this meetup in January 2025, and I distinctly remember the December 2025 meetup being the first time I left that brewery feeling like I was in a space were I belonged, surrounded by friends. Since then, I've had a wonderful time each month.

I'm incredibly happy to be where I'm at with this group, but there's still grief about needing to work so hard to get there, especially when I see folks who joined much more recently than me build those relationships so much quicker. I don't like to think of relationship-building as a race, but it does feel like getting lapped. I sometimes even feel jealous watching it happen.

Still, I'm proud of myself. Part of what makes me so proud of the work I've done with Anville is the personal development it represents. It took months of encouragement for a friend to finally convince me to attend the brewery meetup; I was too timid. My evolution from that timidity to organizing events of my own has been really good for me--a measure of self-confidence and proof that I can step into new social contexts and find success, even when it's hard.

A few months ago, during Q&A after giving a talk, a friend in the audience raised their hand and asked me how I would define "community". Despite having spent the past 40 minutes talking about community, I didn't have a good answer for them, and I don't have one now. For a long time, "community" was something I felt I was lacking--even among a healthy friend group--but I could never put my finger on what exactly I was looking for.

Whatever "community" is, I think I've finally found it.