For me it dates back to the first time I played Breath of Fire III for the Playstation 1, we are talking 1999 or early 2000. This was the first recollection I had with a bipedal, anthropomorphic animal character. I thought the whole concept of a bipedal animal to be super cool! As my tiny child mind used to rationalize Rei's character was that he was "a human, with a tail, and an animal, but not really an animal and not really a human, just something cool!" lol I was such a dorky tyke, I used to pretend I was Rei with my small band of friends back in the day. Guess it is just in my dehnah.....I mean DNA to be a nerd. I've been a fan of the style since, but didn't know there was a whole fandom based around it until I was at least 18 years old. I became heavily immersed in the fandom around that time. But, dude, you should totally ask your cousin. Funny thing about us Furs is that we all join the fandom for differing reasons. His reason might be vastly different from our small group of Guardian Furs gathered here.

For me, it's social anxiety.

But many do it for the art style or the community in general