When I was a kid, I had a VHS player. Some of you youngsters might not know, but this was a device that plays tapes, the kind you needed to rewind after you finished watching a movie so that when you put it in again, it starts from the beginning. Wonderful invention, really. 

Anyway, I loved one specific tape, it was Cats the Musical. What else was more appealing to a three year old than people with cat ears and tails dancing and singing? I had some tiger pajamas that I practically lived in and wore whenever I watched the movie. I watched the thing maybe 4 to 5 times a day until the songs can still be heard in the back of my mind. 

The song I loved most was called Macavity, about a cat so cool, he could break any law he wanted-- like the law of gravity as mentioned in the song. I soon outgrew my tiger pajamas but I didn't outgrow my love of that movie. 

Going on five or six, I was doodling pictures of people and animals but found that animals were more to my liking. I liked drawing some animals standing on two legs like in Cats the Musical. Sadly, around the age of seven, my aunt threw away my Cats the Musical VHS tape. 

At roughly eight or nine, I got a Kindle Fire that I spent way too much time on. I often found myself looking up Cats the Musical and found my way into a black hole we call YouTube that sucked me right up and showed me animations of animals with human expressions and walked on two legs. 

One of the first animators I discovered went by the username Bluekyokitty, a guy who liked drawing a dog and adding music to it. He uploaded a video that eventually stuck with me throughout my life-- he uploaded a video of him with his completed fursuit head. 

I, being a child, didn't understand what it was but I knew he made it himself so I started creating animal based Halloween costumes starting with the Pokemon Zangoose, a white and red mongoose sort of Pokemon with big slashing claws. It was my favorite, honestly. I used foam, a jacket, fabric, whatever I could get my hands on and by golly I had made the most monstrous costume I ever remember seeing. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, it was the ugliest thing in the world but that little me was extremely proud of the costume. 

Around ten or so, I discovered GinjaNinjaowo who made an animation of a cat waving it's tail back and forth to an Alvin and the Chipmunks song. I had been reading Sonic comics around the time, so I decided to make a costume of Tails. It wasn't bad, the head was attached to the hood of a jacket so it slid on easy. The tails on Tails were made of foam so they were light and glued to some old pants I had. I still have the pants in my closet today. 

Eventually on YouTube came SplashKittyArtist who made a video called Tetris that consisted of a blue cat running from falling Tetris shapes. Then at maybe eleven, someone saw my drawings and asked "are you a furry?" I didn't know what a furry was, all I knew is that I liked drawing animals with human-like personalities. So naturally, I said "no, what is that?" This person misinformed me by saying these words "a furry is a person who likes animals too much and wants to date them." 

I was really concerned and disturbed. So I grew up thinking furries were people who wanted to date animals. When twelve hit, someone changed my definition of furry. "A furry is someone who thinks they are an animal." This definition was still wrong but I believed it. 

I got attached to the TV show ThunderCats but still didn't know that my favorite characters, Wilykit and Wilykat, were furries. I kept drawing animal characters and minding my own business at fourteen when a dear friend of mine said "hey, I found a furry." I was interested and spoke with the furry. 

He was nice and really cool, we exchanged Kik usernames and messaged each other. He didn't tell me when being furry was right away, but he sent me a video of a giant grey and blue dog doing stuff on Vine. 

I looked at it and remembered "hey, I've seen that kind of costume before on an animal animator." Then it clicked. I finally had a genre for my animal characters and realized what these "animal animators" really were. They weren't trying to get with animals, they didn't believe they were animals, they were creative people who share art mainly through the internet and social platforms. 

At fifteen, I managed to make a fursuit head and was very proud of it. It's a blue dog with dark blue eyes, a friendly smile, a tuft of black hair that is swept slightly to the left, and big floppy ears. (Shameless plug: to see it, go to my Instagram @Blueberryfantaboi) 

At this current time, I've officially known about the fandom for two years, but going by how long I've been acting like a furry, I'd say I've been a furry since I saw Blue put on a fursuit head, or even since I saw Cats the Musical, or maybe I've just been furry my whole life.