Here’s the thing about furries: they show up when you least expect it. Furrying their way around the internet, entering your inbox, getting all up in your hair. Furries — people interested in anthropomorphic animals who act like humans — are not people you would notice unless you see their tails.
So when a guy who goes by the name of “catlover19xx” sends you a message on OkCupid and says you should message him if “you want to let [him] take pictures of you. Preferably of you dressed as an animal,” you might brace for the worst.
At least, I did when this happened to me. Don’t let this happen to you.
Then there were a few other things from his messages that made my furry radar go off; he told me his favorite football team is the Bengals because they have a cat mascot. Never mind the fact that his username has “catlover” in it despite the fact that he told me he has a dog and not a cat — that, I don’t think I’ll fully understand.
I asked him if he was a brony — male My Little Pony fans with an inkling towards the ponies, at the insistence of a friend, and he said, “Ha! No. I wonder if that’s why I usually never get replies to my messages.”
Well, catlover, I think it might also be because you want to take pictures of people dressed as an animal.
I, then, decided to just be straight up with him — “Are you a furry?” I asked.
“Aren’t they the same thing?” he said, referring to furries and bronies. “And no.”
He thought I was joking about asking him if he’s a furry. I wasn’t. I just really wanted to know if that’s why he likes people dressed as animals.
“Does my profile just scream sexual deviant, or do you just ask everyone that?”
No, I just expected someone looking for a furry to go to FurryMate or one of the dozen websites out there dedicated to the furry life. OkCupid seems more to be the tech bro’s go-to for meeting cisfemales. (There is a tech bro stereotype in here somewhere, I know it.)
After that, he started asking me questions about sexual fetishes that I had never even heard of before. But, of course, Rule 34: if it exists, there is probably porn of it. I stopped responding to his messages when I just sat at my laptop in disbelief over why I decided to respond to his messages in the first place. It’s one thing to see where things go, it’s another to just go towards the absurd.
