The halls of WJ are cluttered with all kinds of students: theater kids, STEM fanatics, burnt out class-skippers and everything in between are thrown together in a community of more than 3,000. As a student struggles through the hordes to reach their next period, they might catch a glimpse of a swishing tail or a pair of faux cat ears poking through the chaos. If so, they likely encountered a member of WJ’s small, little-known, but nevertheless present furry or therian communities.
Freshman Zoe Cantatore-Fitch is a furry, and has been for about two years. The most obvious manifestation of this is what most students recognize them by: their distinctive fluffy black tail, large black paws and black headphones with flashing RGB cat ears on top. They bought the accessories off of Amazon and mostly wear them at school.
“I don’t like school, so I figured that if I was going to go then I was going to at least enjoy myself,” Cantatore-Fitch said. “They give me a sense of comfort, it makes me happy and it’s just fun. Also, it means I get like six feet of space in the hallway.”
Cantatore-Fitch explained that they don’t identify or behave like an animal, that not all furries wear cat accessories and that rather than an identity, being a furry is about being part of a community, meeting like-minded people and doing something that makes them happy.
“As a general rule, the community is pretty welcoming,” Cantatore-Fitch said. “Like most communities, there’s some not so great people in it, but there’s also a lot of nice sides to it. The community gets a lot of bad portrayal in the media, and I feel like it’s kind of undeserved.”
Junior Hannah Kline is a therian, specifically a feline cladotherian, which means she identifies as “not just one type of cat but all of the felines.” She said that being a therian, unlike being a furry, isn’t a choice, and that while the two communities often get conflated, they’re in fact substantially different.
“Therianthropy is about identifying as a non-human animal, but not physically; like spiritually or psychologically,” Kline said. “It’s kind of complicated because it’s a very unique experience, and it varies a lot based on the individual.”
Both Kline and Cantatore-Fitch said that in their experience, teasing or harassment from other students is simply a part of being a therian or furry. Cantatore-Fitch said that while most students leave them alone, they’re still harassed multiple times a week, typically spread out across several days.
“I feel like most people at the school are generally pretty chill with it, and then there’s a couple people that are just jerks,” Cantatore-Fitch said. “For the most part I’ve just gotten nasty remarks, mocking comments, been catcalled, flirted with, [and] meowed at.”
Kline corroborated this and said that students often bark or meow at her as they walk past.
“Everyone’s all cool until there’s someone wearing animal accessories around and then they don’t know how to act,” Kline said. “I understand not knowing how to react when you see someone wearing a tail, but it’s pretty easy to just move on.”
However, Cantatore-Fitch said that it doesn’t bother them too much.
“I just kinda turn up the music on my headphones so that I don’t even notice, and then I think people realize I don’t care so I’m not really a good target,” Cantatore-Fitch said. “If they say something really rude it’s obviously going to hurt, but that doesn’t happen very often.”
Kline agreed and said that she doesn’t really pay much attention to students who tease her in the hallway.
“I’ve gotten used to it,” Kline said. “I’ve come to accept the fact that some people are going to be completely weirded out by this.”
Still, Cantatore-Fitch said that some students and staff have had the opposite reaction.
“Some people have been really nice about it and asked if they could put on my paws, if they could take a picture with me,” Cantatore-Fitch said. “Two of my teachers have made nice comments about it and it makes me happy.”
