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], "description": "Better Than Best Friends\nChapter 2: Axioms of The Self\n\nWords: 8775 | Total Words: 15,033\nParagraphs: 74 | Total Paragraphs: 156\nSections: 1\n\nSynopsis:\n\n[i]Jonah begins the journey into his mind, probing his earliest memories, going off on philosophical tangents, jumping around his timeline slightly, and trying to determine the origins of self and attraction. Along the way we get glimpses into the world Jonah inhabits, anthromorph psychology, their religion, their history, their sexual taboos, their mysteries, and even an introduction to anthromorph genetics.\n\nJonah gets confused and can't quite remember things correctly, but he is self aware enough to catch himself. Is he remembering things correctly, or are all his experiences colored by \"the nexus of all his thoughts and feelings\" ...\n\nWe also learn of Jonah's abusive childhood and learn about his biological father for the first time.\n\nThis is only the beginning ...[/i]\n\nChapter Outro:\nUlrich Schnauss- A Strangely Isolated Place - A Letter from Home (2019 Remaster)\nhttps://open.spotify.com/track/4O4qQ0AfTEPegcbkyDKD57?si=2bo7qPbxTlWrmUr-4lkVyw", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Better Than Best Friends
Chapter 2: Axioms of The Self

Words: 8775 | Total Words: 15,033
Paragraphs: 74 | Total Paragraphs: 156
Sections: 1

Synopsis:

Jonah begins the journey into his mind, probing his earliest memories, going off on philosophical tangents, jumping around his timeline slightly, and trying to determine the origins of self and attraction. Along the way we get glimpses into the world Jonah inhabits, anthromorph psychology, their religion, their history, their sexual taboos, their mysteries, and even an introduction to anthromorph genetics.

Jonah gets confused and can't quite remember things correctly, but he is self aware enough to catch himself. Is he remembering things correctly, or are all his experiences colored by "the nexus of all his thoughts and feelings" ...

We also learn of Jonah's abusive childhood and learn about his biological father for the first time.

This is only the beginning ...

Chapter Outro:
Ulrich Schnauss- A Strangely Isolated Place - A Letter from Home (2019 Remaster)
https://open.spotify.com/track/4O4qQ0AfTEPegcbkyDKD57?s...", "writing": "[center][b][i][color=#ff0000]Better Than Best Friends[/color][/i][/b][/center]\n[center][b]Chapter 2[/b][/center][center][b]Axioms of the Self[/b][/center]\n[b]1[/b]\tMy \"earliest\" memory is not a real memory at all. Allow me to explain. It's a memory of a time before I existed, before I was born, or even conceived. I know, I know, impossible right? But how do we really know for sure? Supposedly our souls outlive our bodies and are taken up into [i]Yah-Hasha's[/i] loving embrace for safe keeping until the judgment day, but where does this soul come from? Clearly the body begins at a particular point in space and time, a point in spacetime. This event is the results of actions in the [i]Furthly realm[/i], the physical conception of a child, brought about by the sacred union of a fur and their mate, right? So it stands to reason that either the body gives rise to the soul, or that [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] grants the body a soul at the moment of conception. The first possibility seems absurd. How does a material thing give rise to an immaterial thing? Anathema! The second possibility makes more sense, especially since as the descendants of animorphic animals and Adam we are all conceived without souls ... or would be if our [i]Savior Yah-Hasha[/i] had not given us them so that we too can have the promise of eternal life. This begs the question though, where do the souls come from? It is said that in the material world matter-energy can not be created nor destroyed. So too perhaps, maybe souls can not be created nor destroyed. I believe that [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] himself breaks off a part of his spirit to form each and every anthromorphs soul. Being an infinite being he can do this forever. If this is so, then in some sense we must have always existed as a part of something greater than ourselves. We are just an idea waiting to be born, to be made manifest ...\n\n[b]2[/b]\tIn any case I remember seeing my parents first meeting as if I was there! They first met in high school during the fall semester of 1972. I see my mother, Grace Adler, whose a chipmunk like me, walking with a friend while carrying various textbooks in her arms. Then a rude fox boy walks up and purposefully knocks all my mothers books on the ground. When she looks up I see the fox flashing her a devilish grin, his eyes and teeth are as narrow and sharp as daggers ... [i]shudders[/i] \n\n[b]3[/b] That jerkass fox is my father, [i]Mikhail Shostakovich Prowler[/i]. His name is actually pronounced \"Me\"-\"High\"-\"El\", no \"K\" sound, but when he came to this country his named was changed to Michil Prowler, though my mom always used to just call him Mich for short, and as far as I know, everyone did. You'll get to know more about him later. Somehow I know these are going to be my parents, as if [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] himself has communicated it psychically. In this memory the bottom half of my vision is complete blackness, representing my own non-existence. Yet I can apparently see and experience things if [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] wishes me to know them.\n\n[b]4[/b]\tHere's the thing though, I remember waking up from this vision, so the actual memory I have was clearly a dream. Mystery solved right? But here's the thing, when I woke up from the dream I couldn't figure out if this was a recalled memory from before my corporeal existence or not. This greatly confused me and I still have my doubts either way. After all, how could one ever know? You could argue that I had simply reconstructed a story of my parents meeting from something my parents told me, but I don't think that's true, because I distinctly remember asking my mother about this and she told me that's exactly how she met my dad. On the other hand I'm not entirely sure about this memory either :/\n\n[b]5[/b]\tWhen I later began to study the Word it became clear that we could never actually be created with souls as animals are forbidden from having them, unlike Adam and his descendants who are conceived with souls ... [i]somehow[/i] ... -_-; ... so our souls must come from somewhere else. I mentioned the theory that we are fragments of [i]Yah-Hasha's[/i] spirit, but another possibility is that our souls are from Sons and Daughters of Eve and the [i]Furthly Realm[/i] is a kind of purgatory for those not quite worthy of damnation nor of salvation. Perhaps I was once a son (or daughter) of Eve and this life is the purgatory I was sent to, to be reborn as an anthromorphic animal, with one more chance to earn my salvation through [i]Yah-Hasha[/i]. It would explain my current predicament, but that's jumping quite a bit ahead.\n\n[b]6[/b]\tI feel like I can also remember my mother singing to me in the womb. I suppose that still seems rather incredible but hopefully a little more believable. But even that I'm not completely certain of. Certainly I was told many times how my mother would sing lullabies to me while I was still in the womb, and even though I'm considered a precocious child in many respects perhaps it is rather grandiose to claim I can actually remember that and it's not just my clever minds clever reconstruction of an event that never actually happened. Memory is quite mysterious that way. There are early memories I have that to this day I am unsure whether they truly happened or were a dream. I have a vague memory, somewhat embarrassing to recall, even to myself, of me convincing a boy my age I met in Pleasant Park to sneak behind some bushes with me. Pleasant Park was the park near my childhood home that my parents used to take me to regularly. I asked if I could pull down his underwear and he obliged. For some very weird reason I got this strange idea in my mind that I wanted to put his peen in my mouth, but I was afraid if I did he might pee in my mouth. I prodded his peen out from it's sheath and asked him if I could put it in my mouth to which he nodded enthusiastically. But I warned him not to pee in my mouth. Every time I'd get close though he'd giggle and squeeze himself like he was getting ready to do just that! I kept trying but never actually did it. That's all I remember. I don't really know for sure if it's a real memory at all. Some of the circumstances seem suspicious. It could well be nothing more than a dream, but life and dreams have a funny way of being blurred together in early childhood so I can only speculate. Firstly it seems unlikely I would have been able to sneak off with anyone. My mother knew I had a bad habit of trying to do inappropriate things with other children. I'd pull their tail or ears, or play with their hair without even being introduced. I just found the other children so interesting. Anyway, I'm jumping a bit ahead here, sorry ...\n\n[b]7[/b]\tThe point is, I am not entirely certain of the reliability of some of my earliest memories. The earliest memory that I am confident is in fact my very first real memory is also somewhat embarrassing to relay. I remember being an infant and my mother nursing me. Up until that point I didn't really \"think\" about the fact that I was a being experiencing a world, or that there were other beings as well. Life was just pure \"experience\" if that makes sense. I didn't know what it meant and it didn't really mean anything, except perhaps that some experiences were pleasant, some were neutral, and some were terrifying and I had no understanding that I had any say in the matter. Anyway while I was nursing I suddenly had a strong desire to bite down upon my mothers teat. My mother screamed out in pain, despite my teeth not having grown in yet. This instantly frightened me. In that brief moment I realized that the scream did not come from me. I realized my mother was a separate fur, and I realized that my actions could have consequences on the world outside myself. In other words, in that moment my sentience was born, or rather, in a sense, myself was born. I became self-aware for the first time, and more importantly, aware that there were others in which to connect to.\n \n[b]8[/b]\tIt is somewhat poetic to note that in order to know one exists one needs to know that something other than oneself exists. How then did God become self-aware? Before he had created anything, and all that existed was God, God would have had nothing to be aware of. He could not even have been aware of his own thoughts, for what would God have thought about? All our thoughts are reflections upon what has already been experienced. But for God there would have been nothing to have ever experienced. Surely there are some who would say I have already spoken a blasphemy, but since [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] himself has not rebuked me, please allow me to be so bold to continue. If he had not created anything and was not self-aware how would God know he could create anything in the first place? How could it have been an intentional act, if God did not even have a self to act with? Was creation itself an unintended accident? But if that is so, it could not have a purpose. For purpose is necessarily the action of a self.\n\n[b]9[/b]\tIt is for thoughts like these that I eventually learned to keep my mouth shut during Sunday School, but I needn't restrain myself here with my own thoughts and God. If God should be offended and he should send [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] to give me a gentle nudge I would desist. But [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] has never rebuked me for my thoughtful inquiry, after all, it's [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] who granted me a mind to think such thoughts in the first place! It is not my mind that is corrupt, but rather, my heart, and I believe this is the reason for [i]Yah-Hasha's[/i] silence. \n\n[b]10[/b]\tAnyway, returning to my life, after that moment of self-realization I always felt safe and at peace in my mothers arms, and would cry every time she'd put me down. All I wanted was to be forever in her presence. Now that I knew there was another person in the world, it seemed all I ever wanted was to be as close as possible to them at all times.\n\n[b]11[/b]\tMom tells me that I was a surprisingly needy baby. She tells me the first word I ever said was \"Mama?\". She had put me in my crib and I had used my hands to lift my head just above the bars. My eyes were filled with tears and I said my first word. I looked directly at her like I was asking for her to hold me. This time she indulged me and picked me up out of the crib. She rocked me and whispered sweet things to me I did not understand and she said I smiled and giggled and was very happy. She'd gently toss me in the air with me facing down towards her. Her face was so radiant and beautiful to me. I could watch it for hours. She'd tickle my belly and playfully nibble my ears. She'd bury and hide her face in my tail and then pop out and surprise me. In these moments I felt like she and I were all that existed and my happiness was complete.\n \n[b]12[/b]\tBut such carefree moments never lasted very long. A scary voice would grumble in the background. Suddenly my mother was distracted. I'd reach out to her face, but she didn't see me anymore. \"What do you want Mich?!\" my mother would say to someone always just out of my view. \"Where's the beer I bought!\" came back an angry voice. \"I moved it to the back of the fridge\" she shot back clearly annoyed. \"I can't find them! Where the hell are they Grace, you know I like my beers on the shelves where I can get to them!\". \"For land's sakes Mich, your making a mess. Don't toss everything on the floor!\". My mother would leave in a hurry and I'd be left there wondering what was going on, who was she talking to. Vaguely I sensed she was being taken from me. I'd cry and begin to toss and turn but this would provoke the angry voice to get louder. \"Shut that whiny brat up, please!\" Mich would say. Thankfully my mother would return and rock me for a bit, and then return me to my crib. Off she went back to some unseen corner. I got myself up from my crib getting my chin just above the bar. \"Mama?\" I said half with tears in my eyes. I saw my mother standing by the fridge. There was a whole bunch of food on the floor and some broken jars. \"Honestly Mich this is ridiculous! Ya' broke der pickle jar!\" she protested. I saw my father for the first time, slouched on the floor still scrambling through the fridge to find his beer while my mother tried to frantically clean up the mess. \"Finally!\" Mich exclaimed, and walked off with his trophy, a six pack. Even then I could sense the aggression in him. Who was he? He walked by my crib and noticed me clinging on to the bars for dear life. \"Grace this kid is trying to climb out of the crib\" he said eyeing me suspiciously while cracking a beer.\n \n[b]13[/b] Grace: \"He just wants his mother. He's too young to climb out.\"\n\n[b]14[/b] Mich: \"pff ... he's your kind ... he's gonna climb out before you know it. You should be teaching him not to try\", he gave me the most frightening look at that moment, and I couldn't help but duck down a little with him bearing over me.\n\n[b]15[/b] Grace: \"Mich, I'm already cleaning up your mess. Can you please just sit down on the couch and let me worry about the baby\"\n\n[b]16[/b] Mich: \"pff ... whatever\"\n\n[b]17[/b]\tIt seemed like he was getting ready to just walk away and I got a little courageous and lifted myself up a little more. Big mistake. That seems to have provoked him. He shoved my head back with such force my grip failed me and I fell and hit the other set of bars and the wall. My first taste of physical pain. I cried out and Mich quickly made himself scarce. My mother came rushing to my aid to pick me up and calm me.\n\n[b]18[/b] Grace: \"What did you do to Jonah!?\"\n\n[b]19[/b] Mich: \"I didn't do shit Grace! That little pissant fell trying to climb out!\"\n\n[b]20[/b] Grace: \"Don't talk about our son like that!\"\n\n[b]21[/b] Mich: \"This isn't what I wanted Grace!\"\n\n[b]22[/b] Grace: \"Well its what happened Mich. Now are you gonna take responsibility for it?\"\n\n[b]23[/b] Mich: \"Responsibility!? What do you think I'm doing right now Grace?! I'm holding a job and still trying to stay in college, and set things up for you to go back to school in the fall so we can afford this place and maybe have a future for ourselves. It's hard enough without that goddamn brat keeping us up at all hours of the day and night! It was a mistake! It happened too soon and you know it!\"\n\n[b]24[/b] Grace: \"This is your son Mich! And he's here now, I'm here now. What's done is done. Just have a little faith that [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] will make it right\"\n\n[b]25[/b] Mich: \"Oh bollocks! Prayer ain't gonna do shit for us...\"\n\n[b]26[/b]\t... and on and on it would go. I didn't understand that argument, of course, but it upset me none the less and I'd whine and whimper the whole time. My mother would bounce me gently up and down and try to calm me as they argued. I clung to her and closed my eyes and wished the scary voice would stop yelling.\n\n[b]27[/b]\tMich wasn't always around. I didn't know why but I was just relieved when he wasn't around because my mother was calmer and would give me more attention. There was no yelling. It was just me and my mother spending time together. I remember us playing games of chase and catch. Chipmunk children instinctively learn from a pretty early age how to be mobile. Not how to walk on twos, but how to hop about on fours like an animorphic chipmunk. My mom would let me loose in the house when Mich wasn't around and then try and catch me. I'm sure if he was around he would get incredibly annoyed. He seemed to be bothered by my chipmunkiness in general. Like the time he caught me nawing on the crib bars. \"Grace he's trying to chew his way out again\" he said. \"That normal chipmunk teething Mich, don'tcha know anythin'. We just need to give him somethin' proper like to chew on\". None the less next time he caught me when mom was in the laundry room he smacked the bars so hard I ended up scurrying about in my crib like a wild animal finally curling up into a corner frightened. \"Do it again, and you'll get worse\" he snarled under his breath. From then on I knew only to chew on the bars when he wasn't around. \n\n[b]28[/b]\tMy mother lavished me with love and I couldn't have been happier for it. But at some point I remember my mother stopped picking me up, stopped responding to my calls, even when Mich wasn't around. She would leave me in the crib to cry and kick a fuss, and would not return except for periodic feeding or changing. \n\n[b]29[/b]\t Even devoted parents have other things they need to do from time to time, but this was more than merely that. You see my bastard of a father had something to do with it. I remember he used to get mad at my mom for cuddling me all the time. He'd yell and then she'd put me down and they would start arguing while I carried on. I had no understanding of what was going on of course, but my mom later confided in me that Mich thought that she picked me up too much. He said that responding to my every whine was going to turn me into a sissy or worse a faggot. That as a boy I had to learn how to manage my own emotions. She protested but he eventually came back with one of those parenting advice books and convinced her I would turn into a homosexual if she wasn't careful. I really hate that bastard. I can tell you for a fact that that didn't do me any favors. As a small infant prey animal I was instinctively terrified to be left alone so much. To make matters worse my bastard father would stick his terrifying muzzle in the crib and bare his fangs and scream at me to be silent! Grace would tell him to knock it off but it didn't seem to stop him. Can you imagine how terrifying it is to be a small prey animal being yelled at by an adult predator! God, he was such an insufferable jerk!\n\n[b]30[/b]\tAt night in my crib I would have terrifying dreams of predators bearing down into my crib to devour me. Shadowy figures with glowing red eyes and impossibly sharp teeth and claws. They would loom around my crib and encircle it, waiting for the moment to strike. If I cried out in terror the moment would come sooner but my silence would not save me either. The dreaded moment always came no matter what I did. When it did they would all pounce upon me at once to tear me to pieces and fight over them. I would awake in a terrifying sweat and cry out until my mother came to comfort me.\n\n[b]31[/b]\tOf course this would wake up Mich in the middle of the night and he'd start getting mad. \"Can you shut that brat up!\" he'd bellow with his predatory growl and that just terrified me even more. Even worse at least once he came bearing down on me telling me to shut up and it was as if my nightmare had indeed come true! \n\n[b]32[/b]\tThankfully my mother would shove him away forcefully and \"rescue\" me. She'd rock me to sleep until all the fear left me. Mich would toss and turn and complain about my whining but that would only make things take longer. \"You're making it worse Mich, your carrying on worse than the baby!\" my mother would say. That really pissed him off and he'd storm off to go sleep on the couch. Good riddance. It was such a relief when he left. I could sense that he wasn't there and even mom seemed to calm down a little more. Sometimes my mother would help comfort me by breastfeeding me a bit. The milk would fill my stomach and I felt a wonderful sense of calm and warmth and connection with my mother. Eventually I would drift back to sleep comforted by my moms warm and loving embrace.\n\n[b]33[/b] \tNow you might think the nightmares were solely on account of my father scaring the shit outta me as a baby. It certainly didn't make things better, and almost certainly made things worse, but psychologists say all of us prey species go through night terrors like this. Apparently as a prey species we hold a vestigial primitive fear of being eaten, even though anthromorphic predators no longer eat anthromorphic prey (well it has happened but it is very rare and is considered a form of predatory psychosis). All prey children have to go through this. You might think that all children go through this, but apparently not. I hear that predator children have dreams of violently eating friends and family. Apparently these nightmares are no less traumatizing, though it's a little hard for me as a prey species to empathize.\n\n[b]34[/b]\tAnyway, on account of Mich and his crackpot \"parenting guide\", I got left in the crib to cry to no avail more times than I care to remember. I remember laying there in the crib eyes streaming with tears, crying for what seemed like hours, until there were no more tears left to cry. And I would just lie there with an empty kind of sadness feeling lonely. I know I'm a prey species and that probably has something to do with this deep need for security from others. It makes sense. One prey animal is very much out in the open and vulnerable, where as there is clear safety in numbers. Surely this must have some kind of subconscious influence on our personalities across species lines. Generally speaking it does seem that prey species tend to be more sociable and friendlier, and predator species tend to be more prone to being loners. There is definitely some predator/prey divide in our society, but it's hardly the only divide. Still as all generalizations go it's not a hard and fast rule. There are gentle and loving predators and cruel and stand-offish prey. In any case, I think for me there is something a little more to it. Even for a prey animal I was especially drawn out of myself as soon as I understood there was even such a thing as outside myself, and I can't quite explain why. Again one could explain this away as a perfectly natural impulse of an infant to reach out to their mother. Certainly on a subconscious level the infant must understand that being a helpless infant, separation from the mother means death. But if it were simply that I would expect I would experience more actual fear. Instead what I felt was mostly sadness. I wanted to play with my mothers hair and ears, to nibble them, I wanted to touch her face, I wanted to snuggle in my mothers bosom, as a small animal is wanton to do. I wanted to hear her voice, see her face, sniff her fur. Even as an infant I was quite grabby. This was another thing my father seemed to be on a mission to curb. He warned my mother that allowing me to be too clingy like that and not setting boundaries and spoiling me would lead to problems later.\n\n[b]35[/b]\tThis need for physical comfort, physical closeness, even from my earliest memories seems to be something innate to me. Where does the self come from? The original self, before experience colors it? Our soul perhaps? But if our soul comes with certain innate attributes that we are not taught, where do those attributes come from? It could be that when [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] fashions a soul for an impending body, that he imbues it with certain innate attributes. But it's also possible that, as a part of himself these attributes were already present, always a part of that part of himself. But if that's true there could never be an explanation for them because they would have always somehow been there with no moment of creation.\n\n[b]36[/b]\tUndoubtedly some secret of my obsession with [u]Jonathan[/u] lies in this core aspect, but I can not really fully explain it's origin because it was simply always there. The nearest I can think of to a theory is maybe, just maybe, because I was doted on by my mother initially, indulged as it were, and then seemingly abandoned, it created a fundamental connection between physical intimacy and a sense of well being. It's my only assurance that I'm truly loved. Without it, no words, no gestures, no acts, seem sufficient. Given the freedom to touch, to be as near as is physically possible, to be denied nothing as it were, only this assures me that I have not been rejected nor abandoned.\n\n[b]37[/b]\tThere is just one problem with this theory: who taught me to want my mother in the first place such that I should feel abandoned afterwards? Now it's not very common amongst prey species, but it has been known to happen in certain predator species that some infants seem kind of indifferent to their mothers. This is usually true of species whose animorphic analogues do not raise their own young or who are not a social species. Whose to say though that this trait might not ocassionally manifest in a prey species from time to time? The fact remains that even for a prey animal I seemed particularly clingy towards my mother even before she began denying me affection. And it's more than just feeling safe in her company. I would rarely sit still and seemed to just want physical contact as much as possible. Mom says she used to rub noses with me and kiss me on the lips and I seemed to like this a lot. One time I apparently stuck my tongue in my mom's mouth and when she pulled back a bit surprised I just giggled. She then had to be more careful because I kept trying to do it and found her reaction amusing.\n\n[b]38[/b] When I was a little older, old enough to walk, maybe around the age of two and a half going on three, I used to like to bury my face between my mother's breasts. When she wasn't paying attention I'd also press my face right into her crotch. \"JONAH!\" she'd yell in surprise and genuine anger. But I'd just giggle. I didn't seem to understand that what I was doing was inappropriate and would increasingly become a problem as I got older. In my mind there was nothing that was off limits when it came to my mother. My sticking my head there was my way of saying I didn't need \"privacy\" from her or her with me. I was only three and it's not like I consciously thought that out. It was all rather innocent, but looking back now it seems rather portentous.\n \n[b]39[/b] So there was something strange about me from the very beginning. I'm afraid that mystery I will have to resign myself to having no explanation for, other than to say, that just as God has an immutable nature, that perhaps all of us possess immutable natures which can not be solely explained by experience or even the mechanations of biology but only by the innermost core of our soul.\n\n[b]40[/b]\tIn any case it can not, in and of itself, explain my obsession with [u]Jonathan[/u] anyway. Clearly I needed physical intimacy, one might say inappropriate contact, from another, from my earliest moments, but this wouldn't explain a particular fixation on one particular individual. One would predict, with such an affliction, that I would in fact be satisfied with physical contact from anyone. That I was born polymorphously perverse. There is some evidence of this in light of the fact that I had the bad habit of pestering many of the children I encountered in my early life. It was only through strict training that I was able to learn to control myself in order to not become a complete nuisance to society. This isn't to say the impulse has ever completely left me, but I learned to control it and for reasons I am still trying to work out seems to have narrowly become focused solely on [u]Jonathan[/u].\n\n[b]41[/b]\tIt doesn't look like it is possible for me to gain any deeper insight on this one. Hmm ... let us state it as our first axiom then: That from my inception, I was a being that craved physical intimacy from others as the true manifestation of love, safety, and acceptance.\n\n[b]42[/b]\tIt strikes me suddenly, recalling my lonely times looking up at the ceiling in my crib, that here I am some twelve years later exactly where I began ... alone ... completely and utterly alone. While I'm no longer confined to a bed as I once was I might as well be, because no matter where I go or what I do I shall forever be alone. Why? Because to truly not be alone, it is not enough to be in the company of others, one must be understood, one must be seen as one [i]is[/i] not merely as one appears to be, and if I'm being honest I am not the easiest furson to understand. Truth is, no one has ever really tried to understand me as me. Instead, whenever I have tried to explain myself, how I really feel and how I really think, they have dismissed me as merely confused, as something needing to be fixed. Everyone that is, except [u]Jonathan[/u]. [u]He[/u] loved and accepted me the way I am, not simply the way [u]he[/u] wanted me to be. [u]He[/u] wanted to understand me as much as I wanted to understand [u]him[/u]. Sigh ... I'm sure I sound pathetic ...\n\n[b]43[/b]\tBut seriously, how many furs in your life are really interested in getting to know you? How many truly deep connections can you expect to form?! When you are a young child friendships are built on curiosity, your only real \"need\" is wonderlust. Everything is new in the world, including the other furs you encounter. When you get older relationships are built on utility. Who would truly want to know me beyond what I could superficially do for them? Who would want to invest the time and energy to really understand such an obtuse fur as myself. \"Just be normal!\" you say ... as if I could chose that! It would only be a pretense. Sure I could superficially gain friends that way ... but inside I would know it was only a mask, and in the darkness behind it would be me ... alone again.\n \n[b]44[/b]\tAnd how can they truly know you if they weren't there to grow with you from the beginning?! When someone has known you from the earliest time there is even much of a \"you\" to speak of, they have a direct experience of \"you\" that can never be conveyed to someone who wasn't there with mere words. What will exist in their head is a fabrication, a false facsimile, of your childhood, your experiences, of you ...\n\n[b]45[/b]\t[u]Jonathan[/u] came into my life at the moment that I was just beginning to form my identity, and the same is true for [u]him[/u] of me. How can that ever be replaced? ...\n\n[b]46[/b]\tI can strangely recall the empty feeling I felt lying there in my crib. I had forgotten that feeling. Now it feels like I'm right back there and all was for naught. All I have accomplished is to briefly crawl out of my crib of loneliness only to be placed right back into it by some unseen nefarious force.\n\n[b]47[/b]\tHm. Something is returning to me. A swirl of colors. A ... pleasant memory. Something like an old friend ... I remember now. At some point my loneliness was at last mitigated by my mom placing a colorful nursery mobile above my crib. I kind of remember crying terribly and having a massive headache as a result, and then it just being there when I opened my eyes. I was momentarily distracted and mesmerized by the pretty colors swirling above my head ... cyan, saffron, scarlet, turquoise, and [u]lilac[/u]. I reached my hands up towards it but it was too far to reach. As I looked at it I came to recognize that the cyan one was me ... and my mother. It was a chipmunk. It had white and black stripes running along its tail and back. The saffron one looked like my father, a fox. I came to realize with time that the other three must be three more animals I had never seen. I was interested in the scarlet one for a long time. It had a huge bushy tail with white and scarlet stripes and the face had a white mask on it. It must have been a raccoon, although I wouldn't have known that at the time of course. The turquoise one I believe was a mouse as it had a long spindly tail, big round ears and a pointy nose. Then there was the [u]lilac figure[/u]. What was it? I remember liking that one in particular. That's right. I think ... I think the [u]lilac one[/u] was a rabbit ... or am I just making that up now? I don't know ... hm. Was I especially interested in the [u]lilac one[/u]? I do seem to remember liking it, but I also liked the scarlet and turquoise ones as well. Of course if I was innately gravitating towards the form of a rabbit it would mean that my attraction to [u]Jonathan[/u] could never really be explained. It would mean that I was innately drawn to the lagomorphic form, that is, to rabbits in general.\n\n[b]48[/b]\tI do seem to recall that one time I caught a glimpse of a show I had never seen before or since on television when I was a little older. It had a rabbit boy in it and I remember him outsmarting a wily and sinister fox that lived outside of the skirts of town. I remember being really drawn to this rabbit. Fascinated by the ears and the way they bounced as he happily pranced along. I'm pretty sure this memory is not a fabrication. But the thing is there were lots of shows I saw as a kid and I was fascinated by all sorts of animals. I was pretty much fascinated by anything that wasn't a chipmunk ... or a fox for that matter, after all, I had already seen those things. I'm only picking out this particular memory because I'm cherry picking the memories involving rabbits in the first place, to see if there was anything special about my earliest memories of them.\n\n[b]49[/b]\tBut therein lies the rub, for you see these memories have already been colored long ago by my later obsession with [u]Jonathan[/u] and everything rabbit. Truth is, when we remember something, are we really remembering as it was, or are we merely remembering a memory of a memory of a memory? That rabbit in the cartoon [i]feels like [u]Jonathan[/u][/i] ... like it was the first time I met [u]him[/u] ... even though rationally that is impossible. I have merely grafted all my feelings and associations of [u]Jonathan[/u] onto that bouncing giddy little rabbit boy. In short, the intensity of these early memories involving rabbits may very well be simply colored by [u]Jonathan[/u] rather than the other way around. That is, did I fall in love with [u]Jonathan[/u] because [u]he[/u]'s a rabbit or did I fall in love with rabbits because of [u]Jonathan[/u]? And how would I ever know which is which?\n\n[b]50[/b]\tBut let's say for argument sake that I was attracted specifically to rabbits. Scientists say that species specific attractions form from early childhood experiences. So it might very well be that I was primed to be attracted to [u]Jonathan[/u] by [u]the lilac figure[/u] on my nursery mobile, or that one cartoon character I saw and formed a strong attachment to (Perhaps because I saw myself in that character as he too was constantly in danger of being harmed by the wily fox, just as me with my father, but through wit and sometimes just dumb luck, he always managed to stay in one piece).\n\n[b]51[/b]\tThe problem with this idea though is it doesn't really explain why the child forms any particular attachment. As I said before I could also point to memories of interest in other animals as well. So this could all very well be explained away as a kind of post hoc rationalization. It is probably more likely that it was meeting [u]Jonathan[/u] that forever solidified my fascination with rabbits rather than the other way around.\n\n[b]52[/b]\tBut why should I be attracted to rabbits at all, [u]Jonathan[/u] or otherwise, in the first place? Why wouldn't I simply be attracted to other chipmunks? Female chipmunks to be specific. Wouldn't that only be [i]natural[/i]? Like begets like, [i]each according to its kind[/i], the Good Book tells us, chipmunks make chipmunks, rabbits make rabbits, and so on. If each species gives forth [i]according to its kind[/i], then its stands to reason that if members of different species should copulate they could never produce offspring. Why? Because if they did, no matter what the species of the offspring, it would contradict the Word. If the child should look like the mother, than the father did not produce [i]according to his kind[/i], and if the child should look like the father, than the mother did not produce [i]according to her kind[/i], and if the child should look like neither the mother nor the father, then neither produced [i]according to their kind[/i]. So no matter what happens, it would be a blasphemy against God. This, the medieval scholars argued, was why a mixed species couple could never produce an offspring, a miscarriage would always result, they maintained, and on the off chance they should be proven wrong and an offspring to a mixed couple was born, that child would necessarily have to be the product of the devil's interference to pervert nature and contradict God. That would of course make me the product of the devil, being the son of a Chipmunk and a Fox. Maybe I am. Perhaps that is why I was born with a perverse heart that love's [u]Jonathan[/u] more than any mate I could ever imagine copulating with.\n\n[b]53[/b]\tThe injunction against interspecies relationships is not unique to the Good Book. It can be seen across almost all of our holy books. The taboo goes way further back than medieval times, all the way back to antiquity and time immemorial, in fact.\n\n[b]54[/b]\tGiven this, are my parents horrid reprobates and am I their abomination? And if I am the offspring of a Chipmunk and a Fox, why do I look like a chipmunk and not say a chipmunk-fox hybrid instead? And am I myself a fowl of common decency in my unfettered fascination with rabbits? All excellent questions!\n\n[b]55[/b]\tThere was a time, less than a millennia ago in fact, when pairings such as my parents would have indeed been worthy of the stake. The furs of the time would have been astonished that a viable offspring had emerged from the pairing, but I would no doubt have also be killed as the devil's handiwork. Clandestine lovers had to be very careful in those days, and when they did have offspring had to attribute them to a same-species partner to maintain the secrecy.\n\n[b]56[/b]\tWith the advent of science, and in particular medical science, the intelligentsia of the time wanted to do more than merely assert the impossibility of mixed species progeny, what they began to call [i]heterogenit offspring[/i]. For scriptural evidence to at least support the possibility they noted that according to the Word, we are all the product of the heterogenit pairings of Adam with our respective animorphic analogues. It was counter argued however that this was for us, the anthromorphs, our original sin, as eating of the tree was Adams and Eves. At least they had a choice, we, it would seem were already born creatures of perversity. It is said that God would have destroyed us all, both the animals Adam defiled and their heterogenit progeny, if it were not for [i]Yah-Hasha[/i], [i]the Spirit of Divine Mercy[/i], who suggested God spare the progeny, the original Anthromorphs, and place them on another world, the [i]Furthly Realm[/i].\n\n[b]57[/b]\tIn any case, the scientists of the day began to document cases of heterogenit progeny, noting that these offspring often had anomalous markings or unusual variations in morphology as compared to same species progeny, which they called [i]homeogenit offspring[/i]. This lead to the disturbing realization that many furs throughout history were actually the product of illicit unions. This eroded some of the trust in the older wisdom. While it was noted that miscarriages did appear to happen with frightful frequency with heterogenit unions as opposed to homeogenit unions, explaining the original stigma associated with the practice, none the less it was not too difficult to produce viable offspring after a few tries.\n\n[b]58[/b]\tThe social stigma began to slowly lift over the following centuries as the grips of the church weakened and the scientific sphere of influence became ever greater. By the industrial age scientists were able to understand the mechanisms that caused the miscarriages of heterogenit unions. It was not that it was impossible to have heterogenit offspring as previously believed, but rather miscarriages were simply more common due to the increased probability of chromosomal disorders. Mysteriously (to the scientists at least), twenty-three of our chromosomal pairs are identical in all anthropomorphic species. What distinguishes us is instead three additional pairs of chromosomes that appear to encode our specific species. Because of this odd \"coincidence\" of parallel anthropomorphism, all anthromorphs are all essentially the same species, our difference accounted for entirely by the three types of \"Genus Chromosomes\".\n\n[b]59[/b]\tIn homeogenit unions the child simply receives three genus chromosomes from each parent for a total of six of one genus-type. For each pair of genus chromosomes, half of the time the mother chromosome dominates, half of the time the father chromosome dominates. In the case of homeogenit unions however this never leads to any complications since regardless each of the three pairs encodes for the same species. Like begets like.\n\n[b]60[/b]\tThings get much more complex when considering heterogenit unions. Things get progressively more complicated (up to a point) when there is multiple generations of species interbreeding amongst more than two species. The basic idea isn't too complicated. For each pair of genus chromosomes a dominant and a recessive chromosome is chosen (the mechanism for this has to do with markers that come packaged with the chromosomes but let's skip those details for now). Whichever species dominates the majority of genus chromosomes (two out of three) becomes the primary species of the offspring. If there is a draw between two or more species however, then the offspring becomes non-viable and a miscarriage occurs. This accounts nicely for the increase in miscarriages. If someone has 3 dominant genus chromosomes all of the same species then they are born as a pure breed. Note that only dominant genus chromosomes are passed on to germ cells, so functionally, even if someone has recessive chromosomes of a secondary species this can not manifest in their offspring. For all intents and purposes the dominant chromosomes overwrite the recessive ones. This of course made detection of heterogenit unions difficult since the pure breed offspring could go on to only beget their primary species even though if medieval scientists could look at their DNA it would prove they were the result of some illicit union! But what happens if one species dominates the majority of chromosomes but another species dominates the minority? In this case somefur will be born with secondary genus characteristics, a \"secondary species\". These characteristics are typically aberrations that can not occur in pure breeds and act as signs of a heterogenit lineage. Which features manifest is a complicated matter. It depends what the secondary species are, which chromosome pair they dominate. Needless to say there are a lot of possible combinations.\n\n[b]61[/b]\tEven in the simplest possible heterogenit union, two pure breeds of different species, there is twenty-seven possible outcomes! Of these, seven lead to non-viable offspring, which is about one-quarter of the time. Only two of these lead to pure breeds. Of the remaining possibilities nine lead to the mother as a primary species and nine lead to the father as the primary species.\n\n[b]62[/b]\tThose with at least one secondary species are known as mixed breeds. Things get considerably more complex when considering what happens when mixed breeds themselves start mixing. Without getting bogged down in the details lets just say the odds of miscarriages increases dramatically.\n\n[b]63[/b]\tIn a time when miscarriages were already common the added complication of heterogenit breeding added an unnecessary extra burden to child birth, hence the long standing taboo. But as medical intervention improved and birth rates improved in general the stigma against heterogenit breeding decreased in proportion.\n\n[b]64[/b]\tAs for me I got my primary species from my mother, and so I am a \"chipmunk\". But in actuality I'm a mixed breed. Unlike most chipmunks my facial stripe does not contain the two black stripes from my tail. There is just darker colored fur between my eyes. Also my ears are longer and more pointed than other chipmunks and they have darker fur at the end. These are secondary characteristics I gained because of my fox heritage. So I'm really a chipmunk-fox hybrid, but for all intents and purposes I'm a chipmunk just like any pure-breed chipmunk. Some suspect that there are certain residual traits that come with being a mixed breed that can influence things like temperament, but there isn't much scientific support for this laymen suspicion.\n\n[b]65[/b]\tThe injunction against heterogenit unions never completely went away. In certain cloistered sects they still enforce it, some groups are even exclusively heterogeneous (of one species), believing in the segregation of all anthromorphic species, but these groups are considered fringe at best and specist at worse. Outside of these outliers however the permissibility of heterogenit unions have largely become the norm in most of the civilized world. This isn't to say homeogenit unions are uncommon, they still account for about two-thirds of all unions, but centuries of practice have made heterogenit unions largely undifferentiated from homeogenit unions. Sometimes when relationships don't work out with a member of another species furs go back to their own species as a remedy. Such was the case with my mother it would seem. Martin is a chipmunk after all. Many furs often mistakenly assume he is my biological dad, but it is not the case. My mother didn't even know him until many years after my birth.\n \n[b]66[/b]\tAnyway, some furs are just exclusively attracted to their own species, as you might expect to be natural and the norm. Such furs are said to be homeogenit. What has proven unexpected, is that a sizable portion of the population, about one-third, seem to be heavily heterogenit. For those that seems attracted to the same and other species fairly equally we have the term omnigenit. But it gets stranger and more complicated still.\n \n[b]67[/b]\tFor reasons science can't explain, sometimes furs become exclusively attracted to a single species other than their own. Terms have been coined for attractions to almost any species of anthromorph you can name. There are felidae-genits (attraction to cats), procyo-genits (attraction to racoons), muridae-genits (attraction to small rodents), etc.\n\n[b]68[/b]\tFor those exclusively or primarily attracted to rabbits the term lagogenit is used. Am I a lagogenit? The thought has certainly crossed my mind many times, more frequently in later years.\n\n[b]69[/b]\tWhen I first met [u]Jonathan[/u] it was an almost magical moment. It's like something in my being resonated with [u]him[/u]. Like I had just discovered something I'd always known but forgotten. You could say it was my natural lagogenit biology reacting to meeting a real live rabbit in person for the first time. For many years this is what I actually believed. That [u]Jonathan[/u] was the first rabbit I ever met, and in that moment I was discovering my lagogenit attraction. It would certainly explain the sudden recognition and intensity of that moment, it was like lightning.\n\n[b]70[/b]\tBut looking at it rationally this can not be the case. Surely I met another rabbit kid before meeting [u]Jonathan[/u]. For whatever reason it didn't have the same impact on me then. Perhaps I was simply too distracted with the many other anthromorphic species the world contained at the time. It is true that rabbits are more inclined to live out in the country, so perhaps I was less likely to encounter one in an urban center like New Fursey, but still it seems highly unlikely I never met a rabbit kid before [u]Jonathan[/u].\n\n[b]71[/b]\tBut I have a second theory, though I'm afraid most will think me silly for saying this. I believe it was not biology at work, but that there was a spiritual dimension to our meeting. I believe that [u]Jonathan[/u] and I were once one spirit, or rather that our spirits once shared a common core. [i]Yah-Hasha[/i] split us and sent us on our separate ways. One thing that lends some credence to this idea is that we both arrived in the [i]Furthly Realm[/i] about the same time. Our birthdays are only a day apart you see. When I met [u]Jonathan[/u] I was recognizing something like a reflection, but more powerful than a reflection, a compliment. A being that is different than you and yet somehow perfectly fills in what is missing, and vice versa for them.\n\n[b]72[/b]\tThat ... or I just really liked [u]his[/u] ears ...\t\n\n[b]73[/b]\t... sigh ...\n\n[b]74[/b]\tI guess there are just some things that are axioms of the self. You can only trace the logic back so far. If it were not so then one could trace back ones existence until one was absolutely nothing at all. What would be left of \"you\" then? You would truly be nothing but a product of your environment. But I believe there is a \"you\" that transcends spacetime and matter-energy. It is not born or conceived, it just is. An idea waiting to be born, to be made manifest ...\n\n[center][b][i][color=#ff0000]...to be continued...[/color][/i][/b][/center]", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "
Better Than Best Friends

Chapter 2
Axioms of the Self

1\tMy "earliest" memory is not a real memory at all. Allow me to explain. It's a memory of a time before I existed, before I was born, or even conceived. I know, I know, impossible right? But how do we really know for sure? Supposedly our souls outlive our bodies and are taken up into Yah-Hasha's loving embrace for safe keeping until the judgment day, but where does this soul come from? Clearly the body begins at a particular point in space and time, a point in spacetime. This event is the results of actions in the Furthly realm, the physical conception of a child, brought about by the sacred union of a fur and their mate, right? So it stands to reason that either the body gives rise to the soul, or that Yah-Hasha grants the body a soul at the moment of conception. The first possibility seems absurd. How does a material thing give rise to an immaterial thing? Anathema! The second possibility makes more sense, especially since as the descendants of animorphic animals and Adam we are all conceived without souls ... or would be if our Savior Yah-Hasha had not given us them so that we too can have the promise of eternal life. This begs the question though, where do the souls come from? It is said that in the material world matter-energy can not be created nor destroyed. So too perhaps, maybe souls can not be created nor destroyed. I believe that Yah-Hasha himself breaks off a part of his spirit to form each and every anthromorphs soul. Being an infinite being he can do this forever. If this is so, then in some sense we must have always existed as a part of something greater than ourselves. We are just an idea waiting to be born, to be made manifest ...

2\tIn any case I remember seeing my parents first meeting as if I was there! They first met in high school during the fall semester of 1972. I see my mother, Grace Adler, whose a chipmunk like me, walking with a friend while carrying various textbooks in her arms. Then a rude fox boy walks up and purposefully knocks all my mothers books on the ground. When she looks up I see the fox flashing her a devilish grin, his eyes and teeth are as narrow and sharp as daggers ... shudders

3 That jerkass fox is my father, Mikhail Shostakovich Prowler. His name is actually pronounced "Me"-"High"-"El", no "K" sound, but when he came to this country his named was changed to Michil Prowler, though my mom always used to just call him Mich for short, and as far as I know, everyone did. You'll get to know more about him later. Somehow I know these are going to be my parents, as if Yah-Hasha himself has communicated it psychically. In this memory the bottom half of my vision is complete blackness, representing my own non-existence. Yet I can apparently see and experience things if Yah-Hasha wishes me to know them.

4\tHere's the thing though, I remember waking up from this vision, so the actual memory I have was clearly a dream. Mystery solved right? But here's the thing, when I woke up from the dream I couldn't figure out if this was a recalled memory from before my corporeal existence or not. This greatly confused me and I still have my doubts either way. After all, how could one ever know? You could argue that I had simply reconstructed a story of my parents meeting from something my parents told me, but I don't think that's true, because I distinctly remember asking my mother about this and she told me that's exactly how she met my dad. On the other hand I'm not entirely sure about this memory either :/

5\tWhen I later began to study the Word it became clear that we could never actually be created with souls as animals are forbidden from having them, unlike Adam and his descendants who are conceived with souls ... somehow ... -_-; ... so our souls must come from somewhere else. I mentioned the theory that we are fragments of Yah-Hasha's spirit, but another possibility is that our souls are from Sons and Daughters of Eve and the Furthly Realm is a kind of purgatory for those not quite worthy of damnation nor of salvation. Perhaps I was once a son (or daughter) of Eve and this life is the purgatory I was sent to, to be reborn as an anthromorphic animal, with one more chance to earn my salvation through Yah-Hasha. It would explain my current predicament, but that's jumping quite a bit ahead.

6\tI feel like I can also remember my mother singing to me in the womb. I suppose that still seems rather incredible but hopefully a little more believable. But even that I'm not completely certain of. Certainly I was told many times how my mother would sing lullabies to me while I was still in the womb, and even though I'm considered a precocious child in many respects perhaps it is rather grandiose to claim I can actually remember that and it's not just my clever minds clever reconstruction of an event that never actually happened. Memory is quite mysterious that way. There are early memories I have that to this day I am unsure whether they truly happened or were a dream. I have a vague memory, somewhat embarrassing to recall, even to myself, of me convincing a boy my age I met in Pleasant Park to sneak behind some bushes with me. Pleasant Park was the park near my childhood home that my parents used to take me to regularly. I asked if I could pull down his underwear and he obliged. For some very weird reason I got this strange idea in my mind that I wanted to put his peen in my mouth, but I was afraid if I did he might pee in my mouth. I prodded his peen out from it's sheath and asked him if I could put it in my mouth to which he nodded enthusiastically. But I warned him not to pee in my mouth. Every time I'd get close though he'd giggle and squeeze himself like he was getting ready to do just that! I kept trying but never actually did it. That's all I remember. I don't really know for sure if it's a real memory at all. Some of the circumstances seem suspicious. It could well be nothing more than a dream, but life and dreams have a funny way of being blurred together in early childhood so I can only speculate. Firstly it seems unlikely I would have been able to sneak off with anyone. My mother knew I had a bad habit of trying to do inappropriate things with other children. I'd pull their tail or ears, or play with their hair without even being introduced. I just found the other children so interesting. Anyway, I'm jumping a bit ahead here, sorry ...

7\tThe point is, I am not entirely certain of the reliability of some of my earliest memories. The earliest memory that I am confident is in fact my very first real memory is also somewhat embarrassing to relay. I remember being an infant and my mother nursing me. Up until that point I didn't really "think" about the fact that I was a being experiencing a world, or that there were other beings as well. Life was just pure "experience" if that makes sense. I didn't know what it meant and it didn't really mean anything, except perhaps that some experiences were pleasant, some were neutral, and some were terrifying and I had no understanding that I had any say in the matter. Anyway while I was nursing I suddenly had a strong desire to bite down upon my mothers teat. My mother screamed out in pain, despite my teeth not having grown in yet. This instantly frightened me. In that brief moment I realized that the scream did not come from me. I realized my mother was a separate fur, and I realized that my actions could have consequences on the world outside myself. In other words, in that moment my sentience was born, or rather, in a sense, myself was born. I became self-aware for the first time, and more importantly, aware that there were others in which to connect to.
 
8\tIt is somewhat poetic to note that in order to know one exists one needs to know that something other than oneself exists. How then did God become self-aware? Before he had created anything, and all that existed was God, God would have had nothing to be aware of. He could not even have been aware of his own thoughts, for what would God have thought about? All our thoughts are reflections upon what has already been experienced. But for God there would have been nothing to have ever experienced. Surely there are some who would say I have already spoken a blasphemy, but since Yah-Hasha himself has not rebuked me, please allow me to be so bold to continue. If he had not created anything and was not self-aware how would God know he could create anything in the first place? How could it have been an intentional act, if God did not even have a self to act with? Was creation itself an unintended accident? But if that is so, it could not have a purpose. For purpose is necessarily the action of a self.

9\tIt is for thoughts like these that I eventually learned to keep my mouth shut during Sunday School, but I needn't restrain myself here with my own thoughts and God. If God should be offended and he should send Yah-Hasha to give me a gentle nudge I would desist. But Yah-Hasha has never rebuked me for my thoughtful inquiry, after all, it's Yah-Hasha who granted me a mind to think such thoughts in the first place! It is not my mind that is corrupt, but rather, my heart, and I believe this is the reason for Yah-Hasha's silence.

10\tAnyway, returning to my life, after that moment of self-realization I always felt safe and at peace in my mothers arms, and would cry every time she'd put me down. All I wanted was to be forever in her presence. Now that I knew there was another person in the world, it seemed all I ever wanted was to be as close as possible to them at all times.

11\tMom tells me that I was a surprisingly needy baby. She tells me the first word I ever said was "Mama?". She had put me in my crib and I had used my hands to lift my head just above the bars. My eyes were filled with tears and I said my first word. I looked directly at her like I was asking for her to hold me. This time she indulged me and picked me up out of the crib. She rocked me and whispered sweet things to me I did not understand and she said I smiled and giggled and was very happy. She'd gently toss me in the air with me facing down towards her. Her face was so radiant and beautiful to me. I could watch it for hours. She'd tickle my belly and playfully nibble my ears. She'd bury and hide her face in my tail and then pop out and surprise me. In these moments I felt like she and I were all that existed and my happiness was complete.
 
12\tBut such carefree moments never lasted very long. A scary voice would grumble in the background. Suddenly my mother was distracted. I'd reach out to her face, but she didn't see me anymore. "What do you want Mich?!" my mother would say to someone always just out of my view. "Where's the beer I bought!" came back an angry voice. "I moved it to the back of the fridge" she shot back clearly annoyed. "I can't find them! Where the hell are they Grace, you know I like my beers on the shelves where I can get to them!". "For land's sakes Mich, your making a mess. Don't toss everything on the floor!". My mother would leave in a hurry and I'd be left there wondering what was going on, who was she talking to. Vaguely I sensed she was being taken from me. I'd cry and begin to toss and turn but this would provoke the angry voice to get louder. "Shut that whiny brat up, please!" Mich would say. Thankfully my mother would return and rock me for a bit, and then return me to my crib. Off she went back to some unseen corner. I got myself up from my crib getting my chin just above the bar. "Mama?" I said half with tears in my eyes. I saw my mother standing by the fridge. There was a whole bunch of food on the floor and some broken jars. "Honestly Mich this is ridiculous! Ya' broke der pickle jar!" she protested. I saw my father for the first time, slouched on the floor still scrambling through the fridge to find his beer while my mother tried to frantically clean up the mess. "Finally!" Mich exclaimed, and walked off with his trophy, a six pack. Even then I could sense the aggression in him. Who was he? He walked by my crib and noticed me clinging on to the bars for dear life. "Grace this kid is trying to climb out of the crib" he said eyeing me suspiciously while cracking a beer.
 
13 Grace: "He just wants his mother. He's too young to climb out."

14 Mich: "pff ... he's your kind ... he's gonna climb out before you know it. You should be teaching him not to try", he gave me the most frightening look at that moment, and I couldn't help but duck down a little with him bearing over me.

15 Grace: "Mich, I'm already cleaning up your mess. Can you please just sit down on the couch and let me worry about the baby"

16 Mich: "pff ... whatever"

17\tIt seemed like he was getting ready to just walk away and I got a little courageous and lifted myself up a little more. Big mistake. That seems to have provoked him. He shoved my head back with such force my grip failed me and I fell and hit the other set of bars and the wall. My first taste of physical pain. I cried out and Mich quickly made himself scarce. My mother came rushing to my aid to pick me up and calm me.

18 Grace: "What did you do to Jonah!?"

19 Mich: "I didn't do shit Grace! That little pissant fell trying to climb out!"

20 Grace: "Don't talk about our son like that!"

21 Mich: "This isn't what I wanted Grace!"

22 Grace: "Well its what happened Mich. Now are you gonna take responsibility for it?"

23 Mich: "Responsibility!? What do you think I'm doing right now Grace?! I'm holding a job and still trying to stay in college, and set things up for you to go back to school in the fall so we can afford this place and maybe have a future for ourselves. It's hard enough without that goddamn brat keeping us up at all hours of the day and night! It was a mistake! It happened too soon and you know it!"

24 Grace: "This is your son Mich! And he's here now, I'm here now. What's done is done. Just have a little faith that Yah-Hasha will make it right"

25 Mich: "Oh bollocks! Prayer ain't gonna do shit for us..."

26\t... and on and on it would go. I didn't understand that argument, of course, but it upset me none the less and I'd whine and whimper the whole time. My mother would bounce me gently up and down and try to calm me as they argued. I clung to her and closed my eyes and wished the scary voice would stop yelling.

27\tMich wasn't always around. I didn't know why but I was just relieved when he wasn't around because my mother was calmer and would give me more attention. There was no yelling. It was just me and my mother spending time together. I remember us playing games of chase and catch. Chipmunk children instinctively learn from a pretty early age how to be mobile. Not how to walk on twos, but how to hop about on fours like an animorphic chipmunk. My mom would let me loose in the house when Mich wasn't around and then try and catch me. I'm sure if he was around he would get incredibly annoyed. He seemed to be bothered by my chipmunkiness in general. Like the time he caught me nawing on the crib bars. "Grace he's trying to chew his way out again" he said. "That normal chipmunk teething Mich, don'tcha know anythin'. We just need to give him somethin' proper like to chew on". None the less next time he caught me when mom was in the laundry room he smacked the bars so hard I ended up scurrying about in my crib like a wild animal finally curling up into a corner frightened. "Do it again, and you'll get worse" he snarled under his breath. From then on I knew only to chew on the bars when he wasn't around.

28\tMy mother lavished me with love and I couldn't have been happier for it. But at some point I remember my mother stopped picking me up, stopped responding to my calls, even when Mich wasn't around. She would leave me in the crib to cry and kick a fuss, and would not return except for periodic feeding or changing.

29\t Even devoted parents have other things they need to do from time to time, but this was more than merely that. You see my bastard of a father had something to do with it. I remember he used to get mad at my mom for cuddling me all the time. He'd yell and then she'd put me down and they would start arguing while I carried on. I had no understanding of what was going on of course, but my mom later confided in me that Mich thought that she picked me up too much. He said that responding to my every whine was going to turn me into a sissy or worse a faggot. That as a boy I had to learn how to manage my own emotions. She protested but he eventually came back with one of those parenting advice books and convinced her I would turn into a homosexual if she wasn't careful. I really hate that bastard. I can tell you for a fact that that didn't do me any favors. As a small infant prey animal I was instinctively terrified to be left alone so much. To make matters worse my bastard father would stick his terrifying muzzle in the crib and bare his fangs and scream at me to be silent! Grace would tell him to knock it off but it didn't seem to stop him. Can you imagine how terrifying it is to be a small prey animal being yelled at by an adult predator! God, he was such an insufferable jerk!

30\tAt night in my crib I would have terrifying dreams of predators bearing down into my crib to devour me. Shadowy figures with glowing red eyes and impossibly sharp teeth and claws. They would loom around my crib and encircle it, waiting for the moment to strike. If I cried out in terror the moment would come sooner but my silence would not save me either. The dreaded moment always came no matter what I did. When it did they would all pounce upon me at once to tear me to pieces and fight over them. I would awake in a terrifying sweat and cry out until my mother came to comfort me.

31\tOf course this would wake up Mich in the middle of the night and he'd start getting mad. "Can you shut that brat up!" he'd bellow with his predatory growl and that just terrified me even more. Even worse at least once he came bearing down on me telling me to shut up and it was as if my nightmare had indeed come true!

32\tThankfully my mother would shove him away forcefully and "rescue" me. She'd rock me to sleep until all the fear left me. Mich would toss and turn and complain about my whining but that would only make things take longer. "You're making it worse Mich, your carrying on worse than the baby!" my mother would say. That really pissed him off and he'd storm off to go sleep on the couch. Good riddance. It was such a relief when he left. I could sense that he wasn't there and even mom seemed to calm down a little more. Sometimes my mother would help comfort me by breastfeeding me a bit. The milk would fill my stomach and I felt a wonderful sense of calm and warmth and connection with my mother. Eventually I would drift back to sleep comforted by my moms warm and loving embrace.

33 \tNow you might think the nightmares were solely on account of my father scaring the shit outta me as a baby. It certainly didn't make things better, and almost certainly made things worse, but psychologists say all of us prey species go through night terrors like this. Apparently as a prey species we hold a vestigial primitive fear of being eaten, even though anthromorphic predators no longer eat anthromorphic prey (well it has happened but it is very rare and is considered a form of predatory psychosis). All prey children have to go through this. You might think that all children go through this, but apparently not. I hear that predator children have dreams of violently eating friends and family. Apparently these nightmares are no less traumatizing, though it's a little hard for me as a prey species to empathize.

34\tAnyway, on account of Mich and his crackpot "parenting guide", I got left in the crib to cry to no avail more times than I care to remember. I remember laying there in the crib eyes streaming with tears, crying for what seemed like hours, until there were no more tears left to cry. And I would just lie there with an empty kind of sadness feeling lonely. I know I'm a prey species and that probably has something to do with this deep need for security from others. It makes sense. One prey animal is very much out in the open and vulnerable, where as there is clear safety in numbers. Surely this must have some kind of subconscious influence on our personalities across species lines. Generally speaking it does seem that prey species tend to be more sociable and friendlier, and predator species tend to be more prone to being loners. There is definitely some predator/prey divide in our society, but it's hardly the only divide. Still as all generalizations go it's not a hard and fast rule. There are gentle and loving predators and cruel and stand-offish prey. In any case, I think for me there is something a little more to it. Even for a prey animal I was especially drawn out of myself as soon as I understood there was even such a thing as outside myself, and I can't quite explain why. Again one could explain this away as a perfectly natural impulse of an infant to reach out to their mother. Certainly on a subconscious level the infant must understand that being a helpless infant, separation from the mother means death. But if it were simply that I would expect I would experience more actual fear. Instead what I felt was mostly sadness. I wanted to play with my mothers hair and ears, to nibble them, I wanted to touch her face, I wanted to snuggle in my mothers bosom, as a small animal is wanton to do. I wanted to hear her voice, see her face, sniff her fur. Even as an infant I was quite grabby. This was another thing my father seemed to be on a mission to curb. He warned my mother that allowing me to be too clingy like that and not setting boundaries and spoiling me would lead to problems later.

35\tThis need for physical comfort, physical closeness, even from my earliest memories seems to be something innate to me. Where does the self come from? The original self, before experience colors it? Our soul perhaps? But if our soul comes with certain innate attributes that we are not taught, where do those attributes come from? It could be that when Yah-Hasha fashions a soul for an impending body, that he imbues it with certain innate attributes. But it's also possible that, as a part of himself these attributes were already present, always a part of that part of himself. But if that's true there could never be an explanation for them because they would have always somehow been there with no moment of creation.

36\tUndoubtedly some secret of my obsession with Jonathan lies in this core aspect, but I can not really fully explain it's origin because it was simply always there. The nearest I can think of to a theory is maybe, just maybe, because I was doted on by my mother initially, indulged as it were, and then seemingly abandoned, it created a fundamental connection between physical intimacy and a sense of well being. It's my only assurance that I'm truly loved. Without it, no words, no gestures, no acts, seem sufficient. Given the freedom to touch, to be as near as is physically possible, to be denied nothing as it were, only this assures me that I have not been rejected nor abandoned.

37\tThere is just one problem with this theory: who taught me to want my mother in the first place such that I should feel abandoned afterwards? Now it's not very common amongst prey species, but it has been known to happen in certain predator species that some infants seem kind of indifferent to their mothers. This is usually true of species whose animorphic analogues do not raise their own young or who are not a social species. Whose to say though that this trait might not ocassionally manifest in a prey species from time to time? The fact remains that even for a prey animal I seemed particularly clingy towards my mother even before she began denying me affection. And it's more than just feeling safe in her company. I would rarely sit still and seemed to just want physical contact as much as possible. Mom says she used to rub noses with me and kiss me on the lips and I seemed to like this a lot. One time I apparently stuck my tongue in my mom's mouth and when she pulled back a bit surprised I just giggled. She then had to be more careful because I kept trying to do it and found her reaction amusing.

38 When I was a little older, old enough to walk, maybe around the age of two and a half going on three, I used to like to bury my face between my mother's breasts. When she wasn't paying attention I'd also press my face right into her crotch. "JONAH!" she'd yell in surprise and genuine anger. But I'd just giggle. I didn't seem to understand that what I was doing was inappropriate and would increasingly become a problem as I got older. In my mind there was nothing that was off limits when it came to my mother. My sticking my head there was my way of saying I didn't need "privacy" from her or her with me. I was only three and it's not like I consciously thought that out. It was all rather innocent, but looking back now it seems rather portentous.
 
39 So there was something strange about me from the very beginning. I'm afraid that mystery I will have to resign myself to having no explanation for, other than to say, that just as God has an immutable nature, that perhaps all of us possess immutable natures which can not be solely explained by experience or even the mechanations of biology but only by the innermost core of our soul.

40\tIn any case it can not, in and of itself, explain my obsession with Jonathan anyway. Clearly I needed physical intimacy, one might say inappropriate contact, from another, from my earliest moments, but this wouldn't explain a particular fixation on one particular individual. One would predict, with such an affliction, that I would in fact be satisfied with physical contact from anyone. That I was born polymorphously perverse. There is some evidence of this in light of the fact that I had the bad habit of pestering many of the children I encountered in my early life. It was only through strict training that I was able to learn to control myself in order to not become a complete nuisance to society. This isn't to say the impulse has ever completely left me, but I learned to control it and for reasons I am still trying to work out seems to have narrowly become focused solely on Jonathan.

41\tIt doesn't look like it is possible for me to gain any deeper insight on this one. Hmm ... let us state it as our first axiom then: That from my inception, I was a being that craved physical intimacy from others as the true manifestation of love, safety, and acceptance.

42\tIt strikes me suddenly, recalling my lonely times looking up at the ceiling in my crib, that here I am some twelve years later exactly where I began ... alone ... completely and utterly alone. While I'm no longer confined to a bed as I once was I might as well be, because no matter where I go or what I do I shall forever be alone. Why? Because to truly not be alone, it is not enough to be in the company of others, one must be understood, one must be seen as one is not merely as one appears to be, and if I'm being honest I am not the easiest furson to understand. Truth is, no one has ever really tried to understand me as me. Instead, whenever I have tried to explain myself, how I really feel and how I really think, they have dismissed me as merely confused, as something needing to be fixed. Everyone that is, except Jonathan. He loved and accepted me the way I am, not simply the way he wanted me to be. He wanted to understand me as much as I wanted to understand him. Sigh ... I'm sure I sound pathetic ...

43\tBut seriously, how many furs in your life are really interested in getting to know you? How many truly deep connections can you expect to form?! When you are a young child friendships are built on curiosity, your only real "need" is wonderlust. Everything is new in the world, including the other furs you encounter. When you get older relationships are built on utility. Who would truly want to know me beyond what I could superficially do for them? Who would want to invest the time and energy to really understand such an obtuse fur as myself. "Just be normal!" you say ... as if I could chose that! It would only be a pretense. Sure I could superficially gain friends that way ... but inside I would know it was only a mask, and in the darkness behind it would be me ... alone again.
 
44\tAnd how can they truly know you if they weren't there to grow with you from the beginning?! When someone has known you from the earliest time there is even much of a "you" to speak of, they have a direct experience of "you" that can never be conveyed to someone who wasn't there with mere words. What will exist in their head is a fabrication, a false facsimile, of your childhood, your experiences, of you ...

45\tJonathan came into my life at the moment that I was just beginning to form my identity, and the same is true for him of me. How can that ever be replaced? ...

46\tI can strangely recall the empty feeling I felt lying there in my crib. I had forgotten that feeling. Now it feels like I'm right back there and all was for naught. All I have accomplished is to briefly crawl out of my crib of loneliness only to be placed right back into it by some unseen nefarious force.

47\tHm. Something is returning to me. A swirl of colors. A ... pleasant memory. Something like an old friend ... I remember now. At some point my loneliness was at last mitigated by my mom placing a colorful nursery mobile above my crib. I kind of remember crying terribly and having a massive headache as a result, and then it just being there when I opened my eyes. I was momentarily distracted and mesmerized by the pretty colors swirling above my head ... cyan, saffron, scarlet, turquoise, and lilac. I reached my hands up towards it but it was too far to reach. As I looked at it I came to recognize that the cyan one was me ... and my mother. It was a chipmunk. It had white and black stripes running along its tail and back. The saffron one looked like my father, a fox. I came to realize with time that the other three must be three more animals I had never seen. I was interested in the scarlet one for a long time. It had a huge bushy tail with white and scarlet stripes and the face had a white mask on it. It must have been a raccoon, although I wouldn't have known that at the time of course. The turquoise one I believe was a mouse as it had a long spindly tail, big round ears and a pointy nose. Then there was the lilac figure. What was it? I remember liking that one in particular. That's right. I think ... I think the lilac one was a rabbit ... or am I just making that up now? I don't know ... hm. Was I especially interested in the lilac one? I do seem to remember liking it, but I also liked the scarlet and turquoise ones as well. Of course if I was innately gravitating towards the form of a rabbit it would mean that my attraction to Jonathan could never really be explained. It would mean that I was innately drawn to the lagomorphic form, that is, to rabbits in general.

48\tI do seem to recall that one time I caught a glimpse of a show I had never seen before or since on television when I was a little older. It had a rabbit boy in it and I remember him outsmarting a wily and sinister fox that lived outside of the skirts of town. I remember being really drawn to this rabbit. Fascinated by the ears and the way they bounced as he happily pranced along. I'm pretty sure this memory is not a fabrication. But the thing is there were lots of shows I saw as a kid and I was fascinated by all sorts of animals. I was pretty much fascinated by anything that wasn't a chipmunk ... or a fox for that matter, after all, I had already seen those things. I'm only picking out this particular memory because I'm cherry picking the memories involving rabbits in the first place, to see if there was anything special about my earliest memories of them.

49\tBut therein lies the rub, for you see these memories have already been colored long ago by my later obsession with Jonathan and everything rabbit. Truth is, when we remember something, are we really remembering as it was, or are we merely remembering a memory of a memory of a memory? That rabbit in the cartoon feels like Jonathan ... like it was the first time I met him ... even though rationally that is impossible. I have merely grafted all my feelings and associations of Jonathan onto that bouncing giddy little rabbit boy. In short, the intensity of these early memories involving rabbits may very well be simply colored by Jonathan rather than the other way around. That is, did I fall in love with Jonathan because he's a rabbit or did I fall in love with rabbits because of Jonathan? And how would I ever know which is which?

50\tBut let's say for argument sake that I was attracted specifically to rabbits. Scientists say that species specific attractions form from early childhood experiences. So it might very well be that I was primed to be attracted to Jonathan by the lilac figure on my nursery mobile, or that one cartoon character I saw and formed a strong attachment to (Perhaps because I saw myself in that character as he too was constantly in danger of being harmed by the wily fox, just as me with my father, but through wit and sometimes just dumb luck, he always managed to stay in one piece).

51\tThe problem with this idea though is it doesn't really explain why the child forms any particular attachment. As I said before I could also point to memories of interest in other animals as well. So this could all very well be explained away as a kind of post hoc rationalization. It is probably more likely that it was meeting Jonathan that forever solidified my fascination with rabbits rather than the other way around.

52\tBut why should I be attracted to rabbits at all, Jonathan or otherwise, in the first place? Why wouldn't I simply be attracted to other chipmunks? Female chipmunks to be specific. Wouldn't that only be natural? Like begets like, each according to its kind, the Good Book tells us, chipmunks make chipmunks, rabbits make rabbits, and so on. If each species gives forth according to its kind, then its stands to reason that if members of different species should copulate they could never produce offspring. Why? Because if they did, no matter what the species of the offspring, it would contradict the Word. If the child should look like the mother, than the father did not produce according to his kind, and if the child should look like the father, than the mother did not produce according to her kind, and if the child should look like neither the mother nor the father, then neither produced according to their kind. So no matter what happens, it would be a blasphemy against God. This, the medieval scholars argued, was why a mixed species couple could never produce an offspring, a miscarriage would always result, they maintained, and on the off chance they should be proven wrong and an offspring to a mixed couple was born, that child would necessarily have to be the product of the devil's interference to pervert nature and contradict God. That would of course make me the product of the devil, being the son of a Chipmunk and a Fox. Maybe I am. Perhaps that is why I was born with a perverse heart that love's Jonathan more than any mate I could ever imagine copulating with.

53\tThe injunction against interspecies relationships is not unique to the Good Book. It can be seen across almost all of our holy books. The taboo goes way further back than medieval times, all the way back to antiquity and time immemorial, in fact.

54\tGiven this, are my parents horrid reprobates and am I their abomination? And if I am the offspring of a Chipmunk and a Fox, why do I look like a chipmunk and not say a chipmunk-fox hybrid instead? And am I myself a fowl of common decency in my unfettered fascination with rabbits? All excellent questions!

55\tThere was a time, less than a millennia ago in fact, when pairings such as my parents would have indeed been worthy of the stake. The furs of the time would have been astonished that a viable offspring had emerged from the pairing, but I would no doubt have also be killed as the devil's handiwork. Clandestine lovers had to be very careful in those days, and when they did have offspring had to attribute them to a same-species partner to maintain the secrecy.

56\tWith the advent of science, and in particular medical science, the intelligentsia of the time wanted to do more than merely assert the impossibility of mixed species progeny, what they began to call heterogenit offspring. For scriptural evidence to at least support the possibility they noted that according to the Word, we are all the product of the heterogenit pairings of Adam with our respective animorphic analogues. It was counter argued however that this was for us, the anthromorphs, our original sin, as eating of the tree was Adams and Eves. At least they had a choice, we, it would seem were already born creatures of perversity. It is said that God would have destroyed us all, both the animals Adam defiled and their heterogenit progeny, if it were not for Yah-Hasha, the Spirit of Divine Mercy, who suggested God spare the progeny, the original Anthromorphs, and place them on another world, the Furthly Realm.

57\tIn any case, the scientists of the day began to document cases of heterogenit progeny, noting that these offspring often had anomalous markings or unusual variations in morphology as compared to same species progeny, which they called homeogenit offspring. This lead to the disturbing realization that many furs throughout history were actually the product of illicit unions. This eroded some of the trust in the older wisdom. While it was noted that miscarriages did appear to happen with frightful frequency with heterogenit unions as opposed to homeogenit unions, explaining the original stigma associated with the practice, none the less it was not too difficult to produce viable offspring after a few tries.

58\tThe social stigma began to slowly lift over the following centuries as the grips of the church weakened and the scientific sphere of influence became ever greater. By the industrial age scientists were able to understand the mechanisms that caused the miscarriages of heterogenit unions. It was not that it was impossible to have heterogenit offspring as previously believed, but rather miscarriages were simply more common due to the increased probability of chromosomal disorders. Mysteriously (to the scientists at least), twenty-three of our chromosomal pairs are identical in all anthropomorphic species. What distinguishes us is instead three additional pairs of chromosomes that appear to encode our specific species. Because of this odd "coincidence" of parallel anthropomorphism, all anthromorphs are all essentially the same species, our difference accounted for entirely by the three types of "Genus Chromosomes".

59\tIn homeogenit unions the child simply receives three genus chromosomes from each parent for a total of six of one genus-type. For each pair of genus chromosomes, half of the time the mother chromosome dominates, half of the time the father chromosome dominates. In the case of homeogenit unions however this never leads to any complications since regardless each of the three pairs encodes for the same species. Like begets like.

60\tThings get much more complex when considering heterogenit unions. Things get progressively more complicated (up to a point) when there is multiple generations of species interbreeding amongst more than two species. The basic idea isn't too complicated. For each pair of genus chromosomes a dominant and a recessive chromosome is chosen (the mechanism for this has to do with markers that come packaged with the chromosomes but let's skip those details for now). Whichever species dominates the majority of genus chromosomes (two out of three) becomes the primary species of the offspring. If there is a draw between two or more species however, then the offspring becomes non-viable and a miscarriage occurs. This accounts nicely for the increase in miscarriages. If someone has 3 dominant genus chromosomes all of the same species then they are born as a pure breed. Note that only dominant genus chromosomes are passed on to germ cells, so functionally, even if someone has recessive chromosomes of a secondary species this can not manifest in their offspring. For all intents and purposes the dominant chromosomes overwrite the recessive ones. This of course made detection of heterogenit unions difficult since the pure breed offspring could go on to only beget their primary species even though if medieval scientists could look at their DNA it would prove they were the result of some illicit union! But what happens if one species dominates the majority of chromosomes but another species dominates the minority? In this case somefur will be born with secondary genus characteristics, a "secondary species". These characteristics are typically aberrations that can not occur in pure breeds and act as signs of a heterogenit lineage. Which features manifest is a complicated matter. It depends what the secondary species are, which chromosome pair they dominate. Needless to say there are a lot of possible combinations.

61\tEven in the simplest possible heterogenit union, two pure breeds of different species, there is twenty-seven possible outcomes! Of these, seven lead to non-viable offspring, which is about one-quarter of the time. Only two of these lead to pure breeds. Of the remaining possibilities nine lead to the mother as a primary species and nine lead to the father as the primary species.

62\tThose with at least one secondary species are known as mixed breeds. Things get considerably more complex when considering what happens when mixed breeds themselves start mixing. Without getting bogged down in the details lets just say the odds of miscarriages increases dramatically.

63\tIn a time when miscarriages were already common the added complication of heterogenit breeding added an unnecessary extra burden to child birth, hence the long standing taboo. But as medical intervention improved and birth rates improved in general the stigma against heterogenit breeding decreased in proportion.

64\tAs for me I got my primary species from my mother, and so I am a "chipmunk". But in actuality I'm a mixed breed. Unlike most chipmunks my facial stripe does not contain the two black stripes from my tail. There is just darker colored fur between my eyes. Also my ears are longer and more pointed than other chipmunks and they have darker fur at the end. These are secondary characteristics I gained because of my fox heritage. So I'm really a chipmunk-fox hybrid, but for all intents and purposes I'm a chipmunk just like any pure-breed chipmunk. Some suspect that there are certain residual traits that come with being a mixed breed that can influence things like temperament, but there isn't much scientific support for this laymen suspicion.

65\tThe injunction against heterogenit unions never completely went away. In certain cloistered sects they still enforce it, some groups are even exclusively heterogeneous (of one species), believing in the segregation of all anthromorphic species, but these groups are considered fringe at best and specist at worse. Outside of these outliers however the permissibility of heterogenit unions have largely become the norm in most of the civilized world. This isn't to say homeogenit unions are uncommon, they still account for about two-thirds of all unions, but centuries of practice have made heterogenit unions largely undifferentiated from homeogenit unions. Sometimes when relationships don't work out with a member of another species furs go back to their own species as a remedy. Such was the case with my mother it would seem. Martin is a chipmunk after all. Many furs often mistakenly assume he is my biological dad, but it is not the case. My mother didn't even know him until many years after my birth.
 
66\tAnyway, some furs are just exclusively attracted to their own species, as you might expect to be natural and the norm. Such furs are said to be homeogenit. What has proven unexpected, is that a sizable portion of the population, about one-third, seem to be heavily heterogenit. For those that seems attracted to the same and other species fairly equally we have the term omnigenit. But it gets stranger and more complicated still.
 
67\tFor reasons science can't explain, sometimes furs become exclusively attracted to a single species other than their own. Terms have been coined for attractions to almost any species of anthromorph you can name. There are felidae-genits (attraction to cats), procyo-genits (attraction to racoons), muridae-genits (attraction to small rodents), etc.

68\tFor those exclusively or primarily attracted to rabbits the term lagogenit is used. Am I a lagogenit? The thought has certainly crossed my mind many times, more frequently in later years.

69\tWhen I first met Jonathan it was an almost magical moment. It's like something in my being resonated with him. Like I had just discovered something I'd always known but forgotten. You could say it was my natural lagogenit biology reacting to meeting a real live rabbit in person for the first time. For many years this is what I actually believed. That Jonathan was the first rabbit I ever met, and in that moment I was discovering my lagogenit attraction. It would certainly explain the sudden recognition and intensity of that moment, it was like lightning.

70\tBut looking at it rationally this can not be the case. Surely I met another rabbit kid before meeting Jonathan. For whatever reason it didn't have the same impact on me then. Perhaps I was simply too distracted with the many other anthromorphic species the world contained at the time. It is true that rabbits are more inclined to live out in the country, so perhaps I was less likely to encounter one in an urban center like New Fursey, but still it seems highly unlikely I never met a rabbit kid before Jonathan.

71\tBut I have a second theory, though I'm afraid most will think me silly for saying this. I believe it was not biology at work, but that there was a spiritual dimension to our meeting. I believe that Jonathan and I were once one spirit, or rather that our spirits once shared a common core. Yah-Hasha split us and sent us on our separate ways. One thing that lends some credence to this idea is that we both arrived in the Furthly Realm about the same time. Our birthdays are only a day apart you see. When I met Jonathan I was recognizing something like a reflection, but more powerful than a reflection, a compliment. A being that is different than you and yet somehow perfectly fills in what is missing, and vice versa for them.

72\tThat ... or I just really liked his ears ...\t

73\t... sigh ...

74\tI guess there are just some things that are axioms of the self. You can only trace the logic back so far. If it were not so then one could trace back ones existence until one was absolutely nothing at all. What would be left of "you" then? You would truly be nothing but a product of your environment. But I believe there is a "you" that transcends spacetime and matter-energy. It is not born or conceived, it just is. An idea waiting to be born, to be made manifest ...

...to be continued...
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