gentle meowing

Sideblog to corral my therian stuff. 34, female, feline therian. Background image found here.

[rattoroni]

“packmate” is a very good word to describe how i feel about some people. like we’re more than friends in my eyes but it’s not romantic you’re just. my person and im #keeping you. because you’re in my pack. wags my tail

[gone-fish-mode]

Kinships Magazine issues #0, #3, and #4 digitized

Via lb_bee's post on Dreamwidth

"Kinships was the first in print magazine for Otherkin [people with nonhuman identities, namely mystical beings like elves, angels, etc.] and other 'people who exist anyway'" (Joyner, 2006 May 10a).  It was "a quarterly magazine of stories, comics, reviews, and poetry" (Joyner and Silva, 2001 April 7) and ran for eight issues, including Issue #0." (lb_bee's PluralWiki post on Kinships magazine)

Check out the digitized versions here!

[pumastuffs]

Weird post-shower footprint. I must’ve touched my toes down first and then pulled them in when I set the rest of my foot down, but if that isn’t some kind of animal print right there.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

I'd try one now, if it comes in pink.

[isuggesttherianthropy]

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Breathtaking Images Of Wildlife By Jürgen Schulmeister

Puma

[oleksiignievyshev]

I’ve finally finished my painting “Belongs to the Wild.”

In total, I worked on it for about three months and invested more than 200 hours into this piece. During the last two weeks, I completely reworked large parts of the painting to bring it closer to my original vision.

[seawolfed]

“Half formed in the wrong shape”

Lately I’ve been focusing more on personal artwork pertaining to my emotions and experience as an alterhuman. Though I write from time to time, I find it much more natural to depict these emotions in visual form rather than with words.

[lonelysummerbreeze]

2004

[pumastuffs]

Lady helping me at DPS asked if the picture was okay, and I had to resist the urge to tell her that my human form is always weird to see. Opted for the ol’ “all license pictures never turn out good” statement instead.

[aestherians]

I dreamed our community was actually somewhat hierarchical and we had a rank above greymuzzle, which was called "grandkin," and it was anyone over the age of 80

[tanix-dragon]

[oleksiignievyshev]

My new painting!

Portrait "Amethyst"

oil on canvas 100x80 cm

[werelioness]

Normalize bunting as a love language

Lions will often greet each other with this head bunting behavior when returning to a pride after a hunt.

I love doing this to my mom, I feel so happy!

And my kitten does this to me, I do this to him; the harmony.

Bunting is a form of animal behavior, often found in felids, in which the animal butts or rubs its head against other things, including people. Bunting as a behaviour can be viewed as a variation of scent rubbing.

[thetadelta]

[Image IDs: Two photos of felines affectionately bonking heads. The first photo is of a male and female lion, the second is of two domestic cats. End ID]

[vagabond-beast-deactivated20260]

Am I a Therian? [A Greymuzzle's Insight]

"Am I a Therian?" you ask with a quizzical expression.

"I like bathing in the sun. I hate taking baths. I'm highly active at 3am," you explain, and so you conclude, "I must be a cat therian!"

Why?

Don't humans also like sitting in warm sunlight? Don't some humans hate the sensation of baths? Aren't some humans more active at night than at day?

Aren't those normal human behaviors?

"I like to howl, bark, and growl! I like to dig in the dirt and play tug-a-war!" you shout excitedly, and so you conclude, "I must be a dog therian!"

Why?

Don't humans also like to be vocal; shouting, hollering, and yelping? Don't some humans love digging in the dirt to see what's beneath? Do you not see the kids playing tug-a-war? Aren't those normal human behaviors?

"But..." you pause and you think. You finally state, "I feel a call to Nature. I feel at home among the trees, when my bare feet touch the Earth. I feel a pain in my heart when looking at my body, like it doesn't feel right. Surely that means I'm a Therian."

Why?

Aren't there humans who feel a call to Nature? Who live by themselves in the woods? Aren't there humans who also feel like something is missing with themselves?

Aren't those normal human behaviors?

"Then how do I know if I'm a Therian?"

Why... are you asking me?

You clearly know yourself better than I do. You have already given so many reasons as to why you must be a Therian, right? So why ask me what you are?

"Cause you're a Therian, too, aren't you?" you ask.

"I am," comes the answer.

"So then tell me," you urge with impatience. "Am I a Therian?"

"I can not tell you," comes another answer. "Because I do not know. I do not know your identity. I do not know what bristles beneath your skin or echoes in your heart."

There are no set rules to define someone who is a Therian. There is no checklist to go through to determine who is a Therian. There are no guidelines to follow under to know who is a Therian.

"Are you an animal?" comes the question. "Are you, in any sense or form, an animal?"

You pause. And you think.

You already know the answer.

"I am an animal."

Then congratulations.

You're a Therian.

[hjarta-deactivated20260124]

i’m always daydreaming about my future home and how i would decorate it but mostly i’m excited about building a healthy home with someone i love

[expressions-of-nature]

Monument Valley, Utah by Radek Skrzypczak

[gone-fish-mode]

i will always be a fan of people describing themselves however they want, do not take this as me shitting on any label in any way.

i do think that it is very telling how i see a lot of folks saying that they have "outgrown" the therian label and taken up holothere instead, saying that it feels more real and legitimate.

something about it wigs me out. and i think that it has to do with perceived seriousness and a bid for legitimacy. linguistic shift is normal and expected, it's not like this is really avoidable. but the difference between holothere and therian is not the same as therianthropy vs. therianism.

therianthropy vs. therianism is really just people using the wrong term. it's not intentional. it's what happens when "therianthrope" has been shortened so much that the original tenses and forms of the word are just forgotten. it's an arguably pretty normal linguistical shift. im a little annoyed by it, mind you. "therianthrope" and "therianthropy" are some kickass words that I think should be used more. but i can't really be shocked or even upset that it's happened.

holothere is different. while the coining of the word + the way many use it can be very genuine, there is undoubtedly a growing population that uses it because of its perceived to be more serious than therian. it's adopted as a way to been seen as a more legitimate identity. and i can't really be mad at that, either. to say that therian has lost some of its.... idk.... power? due to it being picked up by certain demographics is not wrong. like there is nothing in the reasoning or the desire that is bad or wrong with any of this.

but it does make me a bit squemish, I think? Because it introduces therianthropy as something lesser within the community. You have an internal conflict with legitimacy, here. And it's based off the label you use. In the past, the community has negotiated legitimacy through grilling. And I am not calling for a return to grilling, I don't think it was a great thing, but... it is something I'm noticing.

How we are changing the way we assert our identity's seriousness is now based off of the initial words we use, as opposed to the understanding of that word.

I could talk more about this. as I said before, this is not an attempt to convince anyone to stop using holothere. I know it has a lot of differences to it and it's deeper to most people. I'm not going to sit here and try to combat this very natural shift in behavior. This is just something I've noticed in the way people talk about the term. It's 7:51 am, I have a final exam at 8:00. So I will be going now. But I would love to hear if anyone has more thoughts on this. I will probably come back around and amend some of what I've said here, I've only been thinking about this topic specifically for like. 15 mins. Give me a day and I'll figure out how to say this a better way.

[thetadelta]

Personally my biggest issue with the holothere thing is that it's based largely on misinformation– people appear to be using it because they think that experiences like intense phantom and mental shifts mean they're a physical therian, which is emphatically not the case. I think the very vague definition of holothere ("nonhuman in every way") is partially to blame for this, because newcomers to the community with intense experiences read that and go "of course that's me, I'm not human at all", but the "every way" explicitly incudes the belief that one's physical body is literally nonhuman. Physical identity isn't "I feel limbs that aren't there" or "I conceptualize myself as nonhuman" (which are standard therian experiences), it's "I literally have a nonhuman body right now".

Physical identity has recently usurped spiritual identity as the "most real" in people's mental hierarchy, so there's a social pressure to say you have a physical identity even if you don't– and it's easy to use phantom shifts to justify that if you're coming from TikTok and don't know that most therians have them, or if you feel like you won't be taken seriously otherwise. It's watered down both therian and holothere/physical therian as terms because the difference between them has been reduced to Vibes when there is actually a very specific distinction (the "physical" part is literal).

As I've said before, the current situation with therianthropy is very reminiscent of what happened with fictionkin in the 2010's, and if things go the same way (which they likely will, online trends die out but communities persevere even if they get fragmented) we are not going to lose the legitimacy of "therian" as a term, and we should be fighting to make sure it stays a serious, well-defined word– not abandoning it because we're worried about being associated with roleplayers on TikTok. We will always be associated with roleplayers and furries by outsiders, if it was avoidable we'd have figured out how by now.

[thetadelta]

Oh the other thing I wanted to say about this is that stuff like "linguistic shift is normal" only applies if the people in question are the ones responsible for the change! Currently what's happening is that the word therian is being appropriated by people outside the community, which is entirely different from if therians themselves suddenly decided to water down their own term.

"Language changes" was actually one of the biggest arguments KFFers used to justify their appropriation of the word "otherkin", and I'm not about to let people think that ceding a decades-old community to a social media trend is a reasonable and justified thing to do.

The language is ours, it only changes if we want it to.

[seawolfed]

“Who is this body for?”

Species dysphoria feels like waking up in a body built to the wrong blueprint - these hands moving at the ends of your arms like strange, overarticulated tools.

Every gesture feels slightly off-balance, every touch too sharp or too precise, as if the world expects you to navigate it with instruments you were never meant to wield. Each time the feeling hits it always comes back to these hands…

Finally got around to finishing this painting. I feel like I’m getting closer to how I want my art to look and feel 🐾

[alterhuman-art]

[Image description: Painting of a coastal wolf curled loosely in on themself and looking over their fore legs which end in human hands. The canine is bordered by twining branches. End description.]