What sparked your interest in the fandom?

I don't really remember the exact path I took, but I do remember instantly falling in love with Katt from Breath of Fire 2. I had always enjoys the various Disney cartoons available around that time (Rescue Rangers, etc) but things didn't click until that game came about. I started talking with others on IRC about BOF2 (and by extension Katt), which eventually led me to discovering the films "Rock and Rule" and "The Secret of NYMH".

I grew up in a fairly isolated place, and so online roleplay over IRC or MUCKS was my primary social outlet. From there, I found myself learning about furries and eventually ended up on the furry IRC network at the time. The furry community was not only friendly/welcoming, but also was populated with outsiders such as myself. It was a turning point in my life, and helped keep my head above water until I left for University.

Hehe, like pretty much everyone here, I was primed for it by Disney and Don Bluth, Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera, Rankin/Bass, and whoever the heck held the IPs for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Raccoons, The Littles and oodles of others I can only remember still-frames of. It's arguable my childhood heroes were a 1:1 ratio of animals to humans.

What pulled me into the fandom, though, was one particular person, an artist I followed on OG DeviantArt. She posted a very emotional piece one day and went a little into the troubles of her life in the description (like ya do) and the course of action she was considering to relieve it. Being the sort who's not comfortable putting that sort of thing out for the public to see, I was kind of impressed with her openness about it all, and dared to send her a little sympathetic DM (no way in heck was I going to put my thoughts out in public in those days).

A few awkward words from a stranger shouldn't mean anything, really. At best it should be a vague reminder that someone somewhere in the world is sorrowed by your sorrow and hopes you'll do what's best for yourself to recover from it, even if that means (e.g.) they won't get to see your beautiful art anymore.

I don't think anything in my life has surprised me more than that she replied to me. It was just a 'thank you', and a note that she still planned to post her art on a particular forum, and invited me to join it. My fate was sealed that day, and the life-altering power of one thoughtless gesture of kindness has been impressed on me ever since. Now here I am, still wading around in this fandom 30 years later, and they'll probably bury me with a little figurine of a lioness in 30 more.

honestly, i think i would have been a furry whether i found it on the internet or not. i was the 'i'm literally a wolf' barking and howling at recess kid LOL. always doodling dogs and stuff growing up, drawing my friends as animals, got super into warrior cats and animal jam at a point, of course. i did watch and rewatch lion king & pokemon movies over and over as a kid as well, which probably also didn't help. but getting on the internet pretty young and seeing emo warrior cats amvs and the early animation memes definitely solidified it. u can pry scourge from my cold dead hands.

i never really considered myself A Furry until the past few years, though. i'd always been adjacent to the fandom but never took part. aaaand that leads me to now, i'm trying to branch out and meet others within it!

I discovered the furry fandom via furry Youtube around 2016. Youtuber furs like Majira, Pocari, and Inodog/Telephone were how I found the fandom, and they really peaked my interest in the community.

I do feel like furry Youtube is much less vibrant nowadays, though maybe I just don't keep up with the new creators as well. Many of my old favorites seem less active.

... that being said I feel like I was doomed to becoming a furry as a warrior cats kid, wolf LARPer at recess, and just loving animals lol

Definitely I have the Furry Gene. As a kid, I was just persistently drawn to anthro media, werewolf stories, stuffed animals, and all that. But I think my introduction to the fandom proper was probably junior year in high school, when a friend of mine was drawing fursonas of everybody. I was fascinated by it, and then went online to look for similar stuff. Found the furry art, and that was that.

I don't think I actually reached out socially to other furs for years and years after that, though. My local environment was very conservative and repressed, so I had to spend a lot of time figuring myself out, coming out of the closet in all the traditional senses, and getting to a stable and comfortable place from which I could do the scary work of actually joining the fandom as a member in good standing. But eventually I reached out to some people on Tumblr, joined some Discord servers and FF14 groups, and branched out from there.