One of the main things she told me about furries is the desire for fur-on-fur contact, or skin on fur contact. A lot of furries have issues with intimacy or communication as "humans," and wearing a costume is one of the ways, or the only way, that they can be intimate. Essentially, they can hide behind a mask and do things they can't do otherwise.
Their costumes can range from something like a chipmunk costume from a halloween store, up to a hand-made movie quality costume like Chewbacca or Bigfoot. When you're wearing your costume, you're not supposed to break character. You're supposed to act like the animal you're representing. Some people never speak. My friend didn't have a costume. I think she wore rabbit ears only. All of this is done outside of public view. My friend said some of the costumes really stank because it was hard to properly dry-clean them...or the owner just didn't want to, LOL!!!
Most of the "activity" is divided between rooms where you essentially cuddle, and rooms where furries...um...make love.
In the cuddle rooms furries spoon and stroke each other. My friend said for a lot of people, that's as far as it goes, and what a lot of the really introverted people needed. It's the sensation of something soft, something warm. And its a person. They don't want those feelings with a real pet. That's different.
In the other rooms, furries um...mate. And they do that in the manner that their representative animal would do. That's a real psychological thing. I don't understand that, but they need it and enjoy it. I think it goes back to being able to be anonymous when inimate. It's not bestiality. They don't actually want to be with an animal. It's the pretending, or the role-playing, that is the excitement. And being something other than themselves in that moment, but with a real person.
I think my friend stopped going to events, but her animal was always part of her persona. She wasn't ashamed of it, it was just something she did when she was younger.
Overall her stories made me sad. These are people who can't touch other people easily, or at all. Or they want get in touch with part of them that is wild or untamed and didn't think it would be accepted in a conventional relationship. And this is how they found they could do it.