May 15, 2021
As it stands now, I fit into two categories under the alterhuman umbrella: otherkind and otherhearted. The details get a little wishy-washy with labels around my otherkin identity...draconic, dragonkin, dragonkind, theriomythic, what-have-you, but the general gist is I'm a dragon, and that's that. I'm also domestic cat-hearted, cheetah-hearted, and Andalite-hearted. I enjoy these creatures, but I'm not them.
But, how do I know?
First of all, I suppose it's not possible to ever really know for sure. Our experiences are subjective and open to interpretation, and even those who've contemplated their identities for years can see them change or need reevaluation in the light of new information. Even so, at this point I can say with fair certainty that I'm a dragon, and not a cat, or a cheetah, or an Andalite.
I've loved cats for as long as I can remember, and begged my parents relentlessly for a kitten even before I was in kindergarten. I gained an intense obsession with cheetahs around that time too, and used to run around the house pretending to be one. I drew house cats and cheetahs incessantly on scraps of computer paper, alongside my innumerable dragon sketches. My mom, being allergic to cats, nixed the idea of getting me a cat at first, but a stray tuxedo kitten showed up at her work, and in the absence of an allergic reaction, she caved and brought the kitten home for a trial run as a pet. The cat ended up staying with us for 18 years. Oh how I loved that cat. I'd sit on the floor next to her and eat dry cereal from a bowl while she ate her kibble, I'd follow her around, nap with her, brush her, and dress her up to my heart's desire. I'd meow and hiss, I'd sharpen my fingernails to be more cat-like, and I convinced my parents to buy me tickets to the Cats musical, where I dressed up as my tuxedo cat for the show. I know cat body language exceptionally well, and can usually figure out pretty quickly what a cat wants or how it's feeling, and I've picked up lifelong feline mannerisms from being around cats since my childhood.
But, I'm not a cat.
Cats feel like family, and I'm thrilled to meet new cats, hang out with my cats, or look at cute art of cats. I will probably own cats for as long as I live. But they're little creatures I surround myself with that move and act in a way I've never felt a pull toward at an identity level.
I grew up reading K.A. Applegate's Animorphs series, and instantly fell in love with her blue centaur aliens, the Andalites. They were weird and funny, and had kickass scythe tails to boot. I'd run around on the playground with my friends at recess, and we'd pretend we were Andalites or other characters from the books. As I grew up, I never quite forgot about Andalites, and came to the abrupt realization recently that I'm probably Andalite-hearted. I was falling asleep one night and the realization that I really vibed with Andalites struck me out of nowhere. They feel familiar and interesting, and somehow important to me. I enjoy the fact that they exist, and I get a kick out of their species design, and they're just darn cool. The last time I read an Animorphs book was in middle school, but I've been thinking about Andalites ever since.
But I'm not an Andalite.
Nothing about their species fits with my experiences as nonhuman, and while I get a warm sense of familiarity when I think about them or interact with media involving them, that sense of familiarity doesn't extend to descriptions of their customs or planet. They'd make a darn cool linktype though, now that I think about it.
A handful of years ago, I spent hundreds of hours researching and writing about an odd seabird called a streaked shearwater. It's a member of the tube-nosed seabirds (of which albatrosses are also members), and likes to nest in burrows on hills above the ocean. It's an excellent flyer, and it can travel immense distances with speed and incredible grace. A couple months into my studies, I had a vision of myself as a shearwater, with white wings spread out to the night sky. I don't typically imagine myself as other animals, so when I had this vision, the intensity startled me, and I began to question if this was a theriotype. I'd spent a month or so doing fieldwork in a shearwater colony, and during my time there, I always felt a longing to leap out from the cliffs and fly over the ocean, and greatly enjoyed crawling around in the dirt and leaves to check on the birds incubating eggs in their burrows. Maybe there was more to that enjoyment than I thought.
Yet, when I imagined myself as a shearwater, flying over cliffs out to the ocean, I was not the bird itself; I was present in its body, but numb and unaware of what the bird's body was doing. I wasn't present mentally in its movements or senses. It was almost as if I were tagging along with the animal itself or hitching a ride, so to speak. Upon further exploration of what I imagined feeling like a shearwater should feel like, from a physical standpoint, I found it unnatural and almost horrifying to imagine my feet moulded into the adorably flappy webbed feet of a seabird, or to have a bristle of feathers sticking out as a tail. The bill felt like a deformed mask, the wings wrong, and the squat duck-like body felt ungainly. The thought of soaring on the night wind was enticing, but beyond that, it was uncomfortable and felt like nothing more than a cameo.
But what happens when the cameo shifts do feel right?
On and off for a few years, I'd have envisage shifts or phantom shifts of tufted cat ears overlaying where my human ears are. They were long and tan, and not really of any feline species I'm aware of, but close enough to a lynx that'd I'd probably describe them as such. I could imagine them flattening or perking up, depending on the situation and my mood. They'd come and go, and weren't really triggered by anything as far as I could tell. Their frequency followed a similar pattern to my draconic shifts...some weeks frequent, with some long periods of complete absence. They've since vanished, and I haven't noticed them around for a good couple years now. I can't say I miss them, but honestly, they were kind of fun, and they never felt particularly wrong, unlike my jaunt in a shearwater's body. However, I never felt an attachment to them identity-wise, and despite sticking around for a good few years, I never felt anything more associated with the shifts beyond some cat ears pasted on my human head (worth noting, my draconic shifts and cat ear shifts never overlapped! No cat-eared dragons here). I don't know where they came from and I don't know where they went. I'm not a lynx, and they were simply a cameo.
Perhaps I'm wrong about all these things, and I'm a draconic, feline, Andalite polykin, but exploring how differently I experience my draconity versus feline, cheetah, and Andalite-heartedness, I'm extremely inclined to believe these are a collection of different identities and cameo shifts. My identity isn't pulled toward shearwaters or lynx like it is toward my variety of western dragon or toward the idea of surrounding myself with cats, cheetahs, and Andalites. They all have distinct feelings, as hard as they are to put into words.