S6E5: Zoo Pride 2024

Please note that this transcript is automatically generated and contains many inaccuracies

Disclaimer

Canidae:  The Zooier Than Thou podcast contains adult concepts and language and is intended for a mature audience. So if hearing grown ups say Skibbity Riz Cringe is cheugy to you, best to sit this one out.

Theme

Kynophile: Hey, what can I say?

You’ve got me howlin’ at the moon!

Whoa, don’t you know that love is wild when you’re a zoo?

We’re Zooier Than Thou!

Oh yeah!

Zoo Pride 2024 Part 1

Tarro: Hello and welcome to Zooier Than Thou, Season 6, Episode 5. I’m your host, Taro, and today, we’re talking about Pride. This one’s maybe a little bit late, depending on what part of the world you’re in, but you know what? We can keep the Pride festivities going for another couple weeks while this comes out.

I am joined today by three fantastic guests. So why don’t you all introduce yourselves?

Lovecat: I’m Lovecat. I am the cat who loves you.

Canidae: I’m Canada. I

Steeeve: Hi Canada,

Canidae: much else.

Steeeve: and I’m Steve, a perky pigeon.

Tarro: perky. Amazingly perky, to be honest. For long time viewers, Canadae is probably a new voice to you but we brought her on because for our extra special queer episode, we thought we’d bring in an expert. I want to ask, are you familiar with the show, are you a long time fan, a new listener?

Canidae: I’m more of a new listener. I found you very recently and I’ve only listened to a handful of episodes.

Tarro: What’s been your favorite so far?

Canidae: I really enjoyed the Pride 20 19 1. And then I also recently watched the Halloween 2023, I believe. And the, samhain ritual at the end was really touching.

Tarro: yeah. Very fun and queer stuff to talk about, but first, we also have a bunch of emails. So let’s kick that off first. Our first email comes from Northwest Riverwolf with the subject coming out. They say, Hello Toggle, Lovecat, Canis, and Co.

Thank goodness we have Lovecat here or else this would have been very awkward. My name is River and I am a zoophile slash zoosexual. I don’t remember which term is the most respectful. I have quite literally never written that out before, nor said that aloud to anyone. I have been zooey since I first discovered sexuality at about 11 or so, and I am now in my early 20s.

so it feels weird to just now admit something I’ve known for about half my life. I’ve struggled with this aspect of my orientation for a really long time, feeling like I never belong. So I just wanted to thank y’all for this podcast. There are times I’d come to the zoo. wtf site just to read and reread the text that states that I am not alone and that there’s nothing wrong with me. It really has helped me feel less alone, so thank you. I currently feel very isolated, I do not have any friends who are zoos, that I know of course, and I’m in a long term relationship with someone who I am fairly sure is anti zoo. I love my partner very much, he loves me, and I am very happy to stay with him.

A relationship with an animal is not a priority of mine. And I am also attracted to humans. So I am comfortable maintaining this relationship with him, and upset knowing that I might lose him if I ever come out to him. On the bright side, I believe my city has a zoo community of sorts. Every once in a while, I come across a Zeta symbol sharpied onto lampposts alongside furry stickers. I think if I reached out to you a bit, I could find other zoos, which also comforts me, but I am very afraid. I am afraid that I am a bad person and that I will lose my loved ones just for being who I am.

But I feel less afraid when I listen to this podcast and hear emails from other zoos that feel to me. I know our community is strong and I’m grateful for that. I hope that sending this message and reaching out to y’all helps me feel more confident in finding and befriending other zoos online.

I am happy that I was able to type this out and send it in the first place, to be honest. If you have any guidance for me in my journey towards self acceptance, please reach out to my email. As I am always happy to talk.

I am grateful that y’all host this space that allows me to be truthful about myself. Thank you. I hope you all are doing well. Feel free to use as much or as little of this message as you want for your podcast if you would like to share. Sorry if this is all incoherent rambling, I had to get it out before I convinced myself to keep it all inside.

Many

Steeeve: River Wolf.

Tarro: Okay. And then River also included a part two. Let’s dive back in. Hi, it’s River again. Just sent a message regarding coming out, but I’m back with another one. I’m listening to an episode of Zoot where a listener sent in an email regarding feline companionship. I tend to be more oriented to canines.

And the occasional equine, but I was reminded of this bond I had with a lovely barn cat I met while I was institutionalized at a boarding school for mentally ill teenagers. The school existed on a farm, as equine therapy and horsemanship was a big element of their therapeutic program. I have a lot of negative feelings and trauma regarding this experience, But something that made my time spent trapped there better was a bond I had with one of the barn cats. She was a solid black cat with a few very charming gray hairs, named Nora. She had lived on the farm for a few years, and I think she was a rescue, originally coming from an animal hoarder. She was very crabby, and not very touchy, so some of the other patients of the program liked to taunt her and push her buttons.

She would lash out as any frustrated and overstimulated being would, and then the other youths would complain that she was too mean. That always angered me, so I tried to go out of my way to show her affection and exist alongside her without touching her at all. Eventually, she warmed up to me, would allow me to pet her, and would even come sit in my lap. When I was tasked with feeding the cats and the horses, Nora would run up to me and chirp in a way that I assumed was happy and allow me to pet her gently before going to her bowl to eat. Once I was in a place of the program where I was allowed to go to the deck of the lodge where patients were housed without supervision, she would find her way to me and sit on my lap while I read or drew or talked to my parents on the phone. She would knead the ever loving shit out of my legs for a few minutes before she got comfortable, which hurt, but emotionally felt good that she wanted my company. The other kids in the program would scoff at me and write Nora’s affections off as her just being cold or hungry and seeking a human to fill those needs.

But I knew that this cat and I understood each other. We had both been hurt, abused, and thrown out, and were healing. I loved her very deeply and still miss her. I’ve heard from a few acquaintances from the program that I still keep in contact with that she disappeared a couple months after I left, and it has been assumed that she passed.

Beside the equine therapy, I love being around horses, they were the special beings I cared for deeply, my times with Nora are the only thing I miss about that place. I’ve never considered my feelings towards her to be romantic, but I’m starting to think that there’s not another way to interpret the emotions that I felt towards her.

She was such a gentle and loving soul, and I wish that I could have brought her with me once I left the program. Her companionship was comparable to nothing. I loved her, and I still love her memory. Like I said, I never thought of myself as being attracted to her beyond the emotional sort of, we’ve been through similar things attitude, but after allowing myself to think about it from a zooier perspective, I definitely think there was some sort of romantic attraction there.

It’s been years, and I miss her more than words. Thank you for reading, and thank you again for allowing me the space to express my feelings and reminisce a little bit. I figure y’all would understand. Feel free to share this on the podcast if you want. Maybe other listeners will be able to relate. Best, Northwest,

Steeeve: Wolf. Yeah.

I think a lot of people would be able to relate with that. What do you think Lovecat?

Lovecat: Yeah I’m primarily attracted to dogs, but my most intense emotional relationship was with a cat. I didn’t conceive of it in a zooey way. At the time, but you also, it doesn’t really matter how you conceive of it, it is what it is. And I just think it’s really beautiful that Northwestern Riverwolf is able to I don’t know, I don’t want to succumb to terms, but embrace this aspect of themselves, finally.

And I’m glad that we were able to facilitate that in a small way. And I’m also really glad to hear about the Zetas around their hometown. I’ve never seen one in the wild, but it would have done me an incredible amount of good to, just spontaneously come upon, signs of others out there

in

Steeeve: We’re putting them out there. We’re on our 10, 000th sticker batch. So we’ve, each batch is 1, 000 stickers. We’ve sent out 9, 000 already. And now my, my 10, 000th sticker has come in. And We’re sending those out now,

so if you would like some, oh yeah, just,

uh, drop any shipping address in the world to Zoo Stories on Twitter, formerly known as X, formerly known as Twitter.

Currently known as X, or send an email to zoostories at protonmail. com. In the meantime, if you would like to donate to help support the zoo stickers, send whatever you like by PayPal to zoostories. com. At ProtonMail. com and it all goes to printing and shipping costs. If you can’t afford to contribute anything, that’s okay to send any shipping address and we will send stickers out to you for free.

Tarro: For free, I want to clarify, I got stickers, I, paid some money nowadays, but got stickers for free, put them up, amazing,

Steeeve: Even if you don’t

put them up and you just hide them away,

it’s kind of quiet act of defiance, right? I feel like it’s

Lovecat: Yeah, but maybe River Wolf can be adding to the,

Steeeve: Oh yeah. Maybe you can meet some Zeta inscribers.

Tarro: I also wanted to say to Riverwolf it’s a shame that you feel super isolated, but just in case you didn’t know, there is a very thriving online zoo community, and I know that’s not a substitute for real life. I know it feels much more impactful to have friends that you can talk to in person about this kind of thing, but as a sort of supplement to that there’s so many amazing zoo spaces, there’s so many great websites and groups and all sorts of things with other people who also sometimes feel a little bit isolated and having someone you can share that with, even if it is just over a screen can be really helpful, so I would really recommend that you try

Steeeve: Thanks so much for

Tarro: somewhere that works for you.

Steeeve: Yeah.

Canidae: Yeah, absolutely.

Steeeve: What do we have next? Something from Lovecat.

Lovecat: So up next we have a simple boy who wants to talk to us about becoming a zoo ally. A simple boy says, I found your podcast ironically enough because I was listening to various talks of commentary channels and they kept mentioning your podcast as being terrible. And so I checked it out, and it turns out the reason they don’t talk in detail about you is because their only reason is blatant zoophobia.

Y’all are incredibly charming. Thank you. Even among other places, your podcast stands out as an incredible source of sex positivity, and opened an honest discussion of issues of safety in sex, and the gritty nuances of consent. And furthermore, I find much of your ecological ethic interesting. I just wanted to say that you opened my eyes, and now I’m rather openly a zoo ally.

Disgust is no justification for moral opposition, let alone violence. If it were, then I’d be justified in opposing heterosexual sex, which would be insane. And even though I’m no zoo, I think the legal oppression you face is utterly horrible. Thank you so much for saying so, Simple Boy. It’s really gratifying to hear.

And it’s funny that we actually get a lot of new listeners from exactly those various toxic commentary channels. And we can even Say that publicly and they’ll still keep doing it and sending people our way. Thanks guys.

Canidae: absolutely.

I found this place and an online zoo community because Those antis were saying like, don’t

Steeeve: Yeah,

Canidae: this is

Steeeve: you do. Yeah.

Lovecat: Don’t look

where I’m

pointing!

Tarro: Honestly, I need to start making a bunch of like alt accounts and just like hate on the podcast and I

feel like that’s really gonna be better advertising than I could

Steeeve: Yeah. Against ourselves. yeah. Speaking of performative outrage against oneself. Most, we’ve said it a million zillion times, but almost all of these antis are. Self hating zoos that are conflicted a normal person who’s just not a zoo recognizes, okay that’s not for me.

And cool that it works for you. I’m going to keep living my life. They just leave us alone. The only people who like freak out and like really come after us with the vengeance are self hating, conflicted zoos. And often they write in and tell us about how they are. Guys, and now are like, dude, now I’m an apologetic former anti and I’m just a zoo now. Yeah, it is what it is, but yeah welcome to the podcast.

We try not to be terrible.

Let’s see. Our next email is from Porter Collie. Porter Collie writes. One of my partners and I came out to each other after two years together. So one night at my work, my partner and I were chatting on telegram and I asked her how she felt about feral art.

she was into it so I sent basically all the pictures I had and she really liked them since they were all dogs. I made a joke about cookies and she said, I haven’t heard that term in a while, lol. So I asked where she heard it from, and to keep a long story shorter, I discovered she was friends with zoos in the past, and then she told a story about how she used to have a physical relationship with one of her grandparents, male pit wilers, mixed long ago.

So I told her about my encounter with my grandparents female wolf usky hybrid. It was a surreal moment to finally tell someone about that, and it was funny to tell her that’s how I got the term Feels Like an Oven. Ha! We’ve known each other for two years now, and we know we’re both zoos. And I know we’re both cookie connoisseurs because she’s making jokes about cookie grip and stuff like that, lol.

I didn’t think we’d get to this point. Anyway, just want to say I love the show and you guys are doing tremendous work. I think this is really relatable because I know a bunch of zoos and way more of them than you might think are female. And I am into female dogs. Yeah, like most of my Long term human romantic partners have been female and zoos, and the ones that weren’t were zoo allies.

And continuously throughout all those relationships, I have had a female canine partner as well. The fact that We’re either able to share in that relationship or, it’s understood and supported at the very least is, has been just like such a blessing. And it’s another case of if you aren’t modeling authentic behavior and really being open with people that you care about who you really are and, who you love, then it’s really hard for people to relate to you authentically.

And you’ll feel. pretty isolated after a while and i’m not saying like everyone should come out it’s not everyone is in a position to do that in a safe fulfilling way but if you don’t do it eventually it’ll add up and the stress will be bad if there’s any, I’m not saying like everyone should come out because if you come out and get, I don’t know, kicked out of your house or murdered or something, then, that’s not ideal.

So use your best judgment. But if you feel like you can manage it and you’re around supportive people who love and care about you, then it, it feels a lot better to be able to come out. And then if you come out to somebody who is also a zoo, then that’s the best. And in fact Most of my relationships with humans have been with other zoos. Anybody else? Relationships with zoos?

Canidae: ah, I’m envious.

Tarro: I want to say special shout out to the feral art technique. This is something that I think is one of the easiest ways for someone to Test the waters when it comes to coming out especially if the other person is like a furry just being like oh, hey I saw this picture thought it was really cute.

Haha, and it just Keep progressing down that line if they’re into it as well, getting into more and more art that becomes less quote unquote, feral in a furry sense, and more pretty explicitly zooey, and eventually a conversation will pretty much always come up where it’s like, Oh, yeah, I like how natural this dog dick looks, or wow, that cookie’s looking real It just it happens.

It

Canidae: uh, to come out to a few people.

Steeeve: which feature really heavily on a lot of shows, including most recently The Boys. There’s like a whole zoo relationship, With the deep and his octopus, there was a another superhero they were thinking of like interviewing called dog not.

Yeah, it’s, it seems really

clear that

somebody on the writing staff Zoo adjacent.

It’s like that. Yeah.

Where this Louisiana woman says, Hey, you want to see a test to see if there’s alligators in the water? She walks down a boat ramp and sticks her hand in the water and slaps it around and says, Yeah, see how that feels wet? Means there’s alligators in there.

That’s zoos, man. If there’s people. There are zoo people. We are everywhere. But yeah, that’s great.

Canidae: about Porter Colley’s email there, I wanted to say that it really does feel wonderful being out to partners. I genuinely can’t imagine not being out to my partners, because, I would just

Steeeve: Or if somebody outs

Canidae: worried about what will they think about me later, if it comes out.

So I tell everybody

Steeeve: of being

against your will at the wrong time are just like so disastrous.

What’s if you call the bomb squad, there’s like a suspicious package or something. What they do is they, Add explosives to the suspected explosives, and then they blow it up. I don’t know if, yeah, and that’s what you do if you out yourself. You’re like, oh,

can’t blow me up, I’ll blow myself up, aha!

Once you’re already blown up, they can’t blow you up any more than you already are, so you’re like, I’m already out, deal with it, suckers. And also, it does feel like an oven. So it’s a good observation. Highly recommended. Anyway, thank you so much for writing in. Who do we have next?

Lovecat: Alright up next we have Curiousine, who wants to give us their sincere thanks and a question too. Curiousine says, Hello cast and crew of Zoot. I’m just an average and inquisitive yeen who’s been listening along since episode six or seven, but I wanted to say thank you for all your hard work in creating this podcast.

I’ve learned a lot about both myself and others since I stumbled upon your podcast,

and I now find myself thinking of you all when I catch a glimpse of the moon. I’ve been meaning to write in for a while now, but haven’t yet had the courage or good enough question to feel it was worth doing.

That said, my question is this. What would be your advice for someone who is definitely animal attracted, but feels they are not able to read animal body language effectively? I’ve struggled to pick up and process body language from humans my whole life, and unfortunately find this limitation extends to our fluffier companions as well.

While I’d never intend to cause harm, the handful of zooey experiences I’ve had always leave me shaken afterwards, filled with anxiety and guilt that I took things farther than my partner wanted. I’ve been told that with my male partners, the signs of consent and enjoyment can be more obvious, but my only non human interaction so far have been with females.

Is there any resource or reference for what sexual gratification and participation looks like by species? How much does this change with each individual’s personality? And from your combined experience, is there any one gender or species that are so obvious or direct with what they want, that there’s never a chance of miscommunication or misunderstanding?

I hope this isn’t too broad a question, and thanks again for running such a fabulous show over there. CuriousYeen. P. S. I believe this was said before. But you all have such charming voices. I think Toggle’s laugh is particularly contagious, and I hope we’ll get to keep hearing it for a long time to come. Thank you very much, Kerisene for all that. We are charming as heck over here, and as was previously stated, that’s why nobody goes into our actual podcast in detail, because, uh, that would spoil the whole narrative that they’re trying to push.

Steeeve: I think that if people keep writing in that we are charming, they’re just going to think that we wrote our own emails to ourselves. And people have accused us of that before. I know, right?

Canidae: heh heh

Tarro: I wanted to say, I love that you are asking this question, because this is exactly the kind of thing that, that we really want to be able to talk about as part of the zoo community, we exist to be able to help share these kind of resources, and as someone who’s thinking about whether or not their partner is, really into it, what they’re saying.

We want to be able to share how animals feel and how animals communicate because they are so good at it. It just does take a little bit of time to learn. It’s like learning any other new language, right? You can’t just go to France and start speaking French. You got to put in the time. So it’s excellent that you’re looking at doing that.

Canidae: Yeah, absolutely,

Lovecat: And there are resources out there. There are, books, there are videos on YouTube that can at least get you started on learning the relevant communication for whatever species you’re interested in. If it’s dogs there’s some pretty excellent guides. Yeah.

What’s her name? Brenda Alof, I think, wrote Canine Body Language, a photographic guide. I consider that one a really fantastic guide and it it covers, all the basics. I think as with any language, there’s always going to be more to learn, but the basics are really not that hard. Dogs especially speak in pretty broad strokes.

And of course, reading a single book isn’t going to make you an expert, but the difference between, not having ever read an actual, book or, or anything on their behavior and having read at least one good one will, will definitely, that’s a huge difference I think.

And I know Steve, you have a background more than I do

Steeeve: Yeah, dude, I totally got

where curiosity is coming from with trying to read animal body language specifically as it relates to sexual arousal and consent. Male versus female. Everyone uses themselves as like a reference, right? And I’ve always been pretty exclusively interested in female animals.

So when I ran into the broader zoo community and found that I was in a tiny minority of people where most people are real interested in male animals and not at all in female animals it was a little harder for me to, find mentorship in that respect. But. The best resource I would recommend for trying to see how animals express their arousal and consent is just animal mating videos, which are on YouTube.

So if you see how they relate to each other, that’s a really good indication of how they’ll relate to you, and then you can mimic their behavior. So for instance, with female dogs The male indicates his interest by sniffing and licking the female’s vulva, ears, and muzzle. And they’ll usually alternate between the three until she either indicates that she’s not interested or she indicates that she is, but that’s like foreplay for them. That’s something to check out. Horses, they have a really pronounced way of indicating their interest as well. I wouldn’t say that. Females are always the more subtle partner because especially with mirrors, they make a really showy display of being interested and that they hold their tail in a super high arc and basically turn their vulva inside out for you and squirt liquid out of it and then squat down for you.

And it’s just dude, this is like getting juicy.

Steeeve: Yeah, that winking display is and you can hear it too. It’s you can’t miss it, man. And then it drives the stallions wild, of course, because, that scent gets picked up, and then to indicate that they have received the scent signal, they turn their whole face inside out, basically. And hold their head up in the air. Yeah, they turn their lip inside out and show all their teeth and hold their head way up in the air. Man, I’m really smelling this. I think it’s been speculated that it helps them smell more effectively, but it’s whoa, dude, that guy’s whole face is crazy.

And then her vulva is like periodically flipping inside out and squishing and a bunch of, it looks like orange Julius. The frothy kind of like cummy foam juice that shoots out when they like cum or when they’re just like, dude, are you crazy? Are you blind? Look at this. I’m ready to be fucked.

Come on. Females when they go into heat, like their vulva triples in size. It’s like the Grinch’s heart basically, but it’s their cookie, and then it’s really fragrant, and you’re just like, dude, and then again, they hold their tail in a really high arc, they’re like, look at this, please, God, I’m so ready.

And also, if you interact with them and then they

either

lower their tail or sit down or walk away or snarl and snap at your throat. There’s like an escalating series of signals that tell you like actually, no, and horses indicate that by, usually they’ll either lower their tail or they’ll shift slightly to the side to just politely indicate like non interest at this time or they’ll walk away or they’ll point their ears back at you as like a targeting mechanism and that’s a prelude toward kicking the life out of your body. There’s a lot of stuff in between, usually Hey, you seem pretty cool and like you’re dead,

um, and everything in between.

It pays to look at how they mate with each other or don’t. And that’ll tell you most of what you need to know, but it, the fact that you’re bothering to ask these questions is a really good sign, as opposed to just barreling forward without a thought for however your animal companions might feel about it.

Anyway! Thanks.

Canidae: I will say if you do look up mating videos,

make sure it’s not forced mating on a farm or something like that.

Steeeve: Oh, for sure. That is

Canidae: make sure it’s oh,

they’re

just out in the field having some fun.

Tarro: Very different energy on those videos.

Steeeve: All right. I think we have Canada up next. Who do you have?

Canidae: All right, so this one comes in from lost, but found thank you. They say, I’m glad I found you guys. I’ve just listened to most, but not all of your shows, and it’s been a blessing to know that such a podcast exists. I feel more comfortable with myself knowing a whole community is out

here. Hopefully, I meet some in the travels through life, a small circle of adult zoos would

complete my life Heh heh

Tarro: That’s sweet.

Lovecat: yeah.

Tarro: did it!

Canidae: Yeah. I absolutely agree with Lost But Found here I recently came into contact with this little

community that’s around this podcast and the

neighboring magazine Zooey.

pub.

I joined the community that’s tied to that, and it has honestly just been like It was like walking through a

desert And then finding a cold bottle of water and that water lets you know, Oh shit, you were

way more dehydrated than you thought.

Lovecat: Yeah.

Yeah.

Canidae: just amazing.

Tarro: Liquid.

before naming myself this I’d never heard of like taro bubble tea but now that every time, now that I’ve named this,

anytime I

Steeeve: my favorite! It’s bright purple. Yeah, it’s bright purple and

smells like

caramel

Tarro: guess I have to

now. It’s on brand.

Lovecat: Jesus.

Steeeve: Yeah, it’s so

weird.

Tarro: good. Oh, I love the color.

In a transition that is not made to make the last email writer feel bad it was recently Zoo Pride Week, and I feel like a lot of us did some fun stuff, or at least I

did. Hopefully someone

else

did, or else that’s a very weird thing to

say. Did you guys get up to anything fun?

I stayed home this year because I was not able to travel anywhere, but that’s okay because basically every week is Zoo Pride Week at my house. And I did have the pleasant surprise of having my parents come through.

Lovecat: Just before the last day, I think they came in on the Friday and I haven’t been able to see them for a couple of years. I would, and they’re, supporters. My dad

was on the podcast, so I would definitely chalk that up as a Zoo Pride happening over here.

Steeeve: What about you?

Canidae: Hell yeah.

Lovecat: Oh,

Tarro: That is super cool.

Canidae: yeah, this is my first Zoo Pride Week since I found out that it even exists. And I believe I

heard it from Taro a couple days before being excited about a magazine post that they were making. . And I was just like, oh shit, Zoo Pride Week! So since then, I’ve basically been chatting up a bunch of zoos and listening to zooey music if I could,

um, experiencing other zooey forms of art it has been a delight.

Tarro: that’s so exciting that I feel like everyone’s first Zoo Pride Week is cool because it’s so many of the holidays that we celebrate are so ingrained in all this history and it’s been decades and everyone knows it but Zoo Pride Week is like special because it’s on one hand, we’re like, we’re screaming it to the world, we’re excited about it, but on the other hand, it’s like, it’s just us, it’s a little bit low key. We’re having our own little special kind of week.

Lovecat: Just an interesting little bit of Lovecat and Steve lore

Lovecat: we actually met in person for the very first time on during the very first Zoo Pride Week when I

had gone on a road trip, and,

Steeeve: you guys.

Lovecat: it was on the 4th of July, yeah, and it

Steeeve: so usually what I do for Zoo

Pride Week is I travel out of

town and meet, I think, the last one we had, I don’t know, like maybe eight or nine people there. And we rent an Airbnb. Like a house all together like a whole big house, and we have a whole big dinner together, and we make crafts for each other to commemorate the Zoo Pride Week, And then we all sign them for each other, so everyone has everyone else’s inscriptions on them, we make different crafts, and then we have this really nice dinner together, and then usually we go see the sites, and everything, and it’s a super good time. But this this year we didn’t, because the usual host of this, and I will not name this person, but had a joyous event to commemorate that required a bunch of planning, and so that happened to coincide with when we would have ordinarily had Zoo Pride Week.

And so we sat this one out, and hopefully will resume next year. And if you’re listening, and I hope you are, then all the attendees of our usual local pride gathering that we go to, I hope to see y’all next time. it’s super fun.

Tarro: That sounds so fun, oh my god.

Steeeve: Yeah I’m ending up with a collection

that,

when my family finds it when I die are going to have a lot of unanswered questions.

I don’t know. I’m outliving most of my family and a lot of people in my life are fully aware of my zooness vis a vis activism, et cetera, et cetera. So not a lot of secrets there, but still, there’d be like, what’s still the. Pawprint, crafts, and whatnot. We’ll just be like some mysteries will just remain a mystery.

It’s fine.

Tarro: I have a group of local zoos that I hang out with as well and we got together for Zoo Pride Week too. But yours

sounds much more wholesome. Uh, we just got together and, like, drank a lot. Listen to music,

there was like some smoochin

Lovecat: Hell yeah,

Canidae: Nice.

Tarro: that was very like, for us related, but do you guys ever take time to celebrate the animals as well for Zoo Pride Week? Cause that was a big thing for me, like I know, for me and my partner. I tried to do just as much for him as I did for myself, so we had one like really great date night where we went on a big walk and then we got home and I cooked up like a really nice meal we went out and we hung out with a much smaller group of zoos with their partners as well and we had a

Steeeve: That does sound charming. our host

brings his animal companion. But just because not everyone’s animal is super compatible with everyone else’s animal, just in a confined, rented space, most people make other arrangements, and I’ll usually find a sitter, or bored my animals or whatever

As opposed to subjecting them to hours and hours of road travel and then hanging out in an enclosed space with unfamiliar animals that may or may not be reactive.

You just, you try to be a good neighbor. So most of us, when we would attend this event, would not bring our animal companions, but they’re always in our hearts and it is really fun to commune with the other zoos.

Tarro: about you, Lovecat?

Lovecat: Yeah, it was,

It was really too hot to, to do much when I used to live close to the beach we would go down there and that’s what I would have done this year if I could have made that happen was take my girl down to the the dog beach which she super loved but I think it was the year before last or maybe three years ago actually A bunch of us, I think there were seven or eight zoos my girl and my mom’s dog before she passed away and we all went on a hike in the redwoods,

um, which was super, super cool.

And actually we recorded a big Happy Zoo Pride up there too, that was on that year’s episode. And that was a very cool experience, yeah. But this year we basically just, uh, laid here with the AC on. That was it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Tarro: Zoo Pride Week. How could this happen? How about you, Kennedy? Do you know anything fun? Animal wise?

Canidae: No, unfortunately, I have a cat friend that I live with, but I’m pretty much broke, and also, I’m not super familiar with what kind of

things cats tend to in,

Steeeve: them sleep,

Canidae: I just had really no idea. But do any

of you happen to know something

Steeeve: they like the most.

Canidae: able to do with the cat?

Steeeve: Yeah they’re big on naps,

it’s almost like a certain kind of nap that’s

been named after them. Really sleepy, so yeah, if you want to like leave something cozy out for them to Sleepon they’ll find it, like a, an Amazon box with a towel.

Yeah. But like a towel in it, just buy a towel from Amazon, open the box, and then just leave the whole thing on the floor.

Canidae: Oh yeah.

Steeeve: dude, I just

found out

that

my cat is crazy about Penaline.

Canidae: Yeah, that could Cleaner, so it’s like Mexican Pine Sol, it’s spelled like P I N I E, anyway, it’s the Mexican Pine Sol that’s like really piney, and anytime I mop, he tries to jump in the mop bucket, and I have to shoo him away, and anytime I mop the floor with it, he just rolls all over it, he gets really piney. About it. If I were throwing a party for my cat, it would definitely involve janitorial services, because he is a, he’s a pine fiend. He loves it. I don’t know if that’s all cats. I don’t know, man. I like the smell, that’s why I picked it, right? But I don’t like, I don’t like it. He like likes it. He’s a pine fiend. A little

Steeeve: pine

fiend. He smells like cat spit and pines, but, I don’t object

Canidae: the way you described how they go after it reminded me of my cat back in the day. I just absolutely adored that cat. If he heard a chain move anywhere in the house, from anywhere in the house He would come ripping as fast as he could, sometimes slamming into walls

Steeeve: Oh,

Canidae: so

I had a chain

wallet, and I would have

to very gently pick it

up and make sure it doesn’t make any

sort of rattling noise,

Steeeve: their own thing.

Canidae: sprinting up my leg,

Steeeve: Yeah, man,

that’s awesome.

so yeah a happy low key,

stay in the AC kind of a zoo pride year this year, but we hope whoever’s listening out there that you found something fun to do with your friends and animal companions and you had a good time of it.

Steeeve: Anyway, usually apropos of the zoo gathering that I mentioned that happens at Zoo Pride Week I will bring a batch of the zoo stickers and I’ll The batch that I got most recently, they just say, someone you love is zoo, and the O’s in the word zoo are cookies. Yeah, that’s the newest one. And then we got another submission for design. That is a super cute

wolf head with, like, zoo pride flag colors and stuff. That one hasn’t been financed yet, but once we get the funding goal reach, then I will order those, and then you’ll have a couple of options.

Anyway the Someone You Love is Zoo ones, I got just in time for the tail end of Zoo Pride, so as a belated Zoo Pride thing, again, if you would like some of the stickers, just drop me a line on X, formerly known as Twitter, and under Zoo Stories, and just let me know where you want them shipped, I’ll send them out for free anywhere in the world.

Canidae: oh I

definitely gotta,

Lovecat: I’ve definitely slapped some Steve made

zoo stickers up around in different areas of the world. I love them.

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A Normal Day

Eggshell: One evening, you’re standing there behind the counter at your gas station job. Bored. Everything is stocked, everything is clean, and your job for the last 41 minutes has been to just stand around and be there. You can hear the clock ticking, second after second after second. As the evening slips by, all too slowly, doorbell chimes and you prepare yourself to greet the customer and find out whether they’re grumpy and in a hurry or just quiet and kind of bored like you are.

As you’re turning to face the door, before you’ve even seen the customer at all, excited click click click click click floor tiles. You smile as you turn around, and see a human, still making their way through the door, and a German Shepherd, already way ahead of them, wagging and quickly walking up and down the aisles, sniffing all of the product.

The human approaches your counter, with a grin, and laughs, and says, Hey

Glancing down at the lanyard that has their job’s badge hanging on it, you see the pins. He, him, bi, zoosexual, Philadelphia Eagles, Dungeons and Dragons, Hello Kitty. He’s getting out his wallet. You say to him, Hello sir. What can I get for you tonight?

the counter, then he grabs a stick of beef jerky off the display beside the counter and sets that in front of you as well. just that, and the rest on palm four Sure, no problem at all.

You begin ringing it up. As you’re in the middle of it, the German Shepherd has come around the counter and is sniffing your leg. You stop bringing up the order, turn and crouch down to let this dog sniff your hands, see your face. The dog gives your face a quick single lick. begin petting them, totally abandoning the order in progress.

It’s a matter of good customer service to be polite to a customer’s spouse., like, how could you not? This is such a friendly dog. After a bit of petting and wagging, the dog turns away and leaves your space behind the counter to go explore around some more.

You finish bringing everything up. Alright, you have 27 94 on pump four. You’re good to go. Thanks, Oh, of course. Have a nice evening, both of you. you as well. they’re outside fueling, you look at them through the window and see him hand the entire stick of beef jerky to the G Shep. The G ship takes it from his hand carefully, and then chews it up with tons of interest and enjoyment.

The next day is an off day for you, but you’ve been roped into attending a family gathering. You’d kind of rather just hang out at home. Not that you dislike these people, just, this was supposed to be a day to relax, and now you’re listening to someone. Aunt? Cousin? You have no idea how you’re related.

Tell you a story about her daughter Anna looking at different colleges for when she graduates.

She just went on a tour of the campus yesterday. I don’t think she’d end up living on campus if she went to this one, but, you know, she’d be there all the time with classes, of course.

As you and her are talking, her phone gets a text chime, and she looks at it.

Oh, it’s Anna now. Let’s see. Oh my goodness! Curtis! Curtis!

What, what,

Anna has a girlfriend!

what, what, what, what, what, what,

She texts Anna back.

OMG, I’m so happy for ya. Who is it? Do we know her?

A message from Anna begins loading. Seconds later, you and this couple are looking at a selfie of Anna and a yellow lab. Anna has her armor on the yellow lab, and the yellow lab looks to be very calm, undisturbed. She types a response to Anna.

So happy for you, sweetie. Oh, let’s see. She sent something Kate knows. She gets it and she says I can take her with me when we all move out.

That night, as you’re playing video games with friends online, mostly commentating to each other on the game, one of your friends is telling the group about how much of a stinker one of his two stallion boyfriends was being today. Another friend is saying how much she can relate.

Her human boyfriend was being super stubborn and weird a week ago, but seems to be normal again now. It was like everything was such an imposition. Ugh. Right? Oh, you hate running in the pasture now and just want to go back inside again? Oh, now you hate being inside and want to go out. And then the next day, right back to normal. Right, back to normal.

As you’re walking to work the next day, you pass by several storefronts that have pride flags and other symbols in their windows. Gay, lesbian, trans, bi, asexual, nonbinary, zoo, therian, and a lot of others you don’t recognize.

As you’re on your first break at work, sitting in the break room and scrolling through your phone, you see a post from one of the streamers, you follow saying that she and her donkey are making it official.

It’s about time to head back to work. You stand up, tap a heart onto the post before putting your phone back in your pocket and getting back to it.

Zoo Pride 2024 Part 2

Tarro: I wanted to ask as well, since we’re also coming off of Pride Month for other forms of queerness, other than just being a zoo did you guys do anything special to celebrate that?

Lovecat: I didn’t. Ha,

Canidae: No, it was too damn hot. But I am planning on going to a parade that’s coming up. I don’t know why the local parade is so late, but yeah, I’m planning on marching in it, hopefully.

Tarro: that’s

Steeeve: that’s

Tarro: I did a parade as well we spent a night at a gay bar, that was really fun. There’s always one week around here that like really, the party kind of like kicks up and so I spent pretty much all of that just like with friends and everything and that was really cool.

How about you, Steve?

Steeeve: Okay, so in my city, for, I don’t know, 30 years, this one organization has been organizing the Pride Parade, and I guess somebody decided they were going to have their own Pride Parade, but the same week almost? So there were just, To I know, this is absurd, there’s two Pride parades back to back, and one of them tried to charge admission, and it’s outdoors and they said part of it’s free, and it’s it’s all free if I don’t go to it, or if I just wait until next week and go to the free one.

What the hell’s wrong with you people? And also it’s pride washed like everything is, where, for exactly one week out of the year, corporations who, for the rest of the time, are donating to politicians, campaigns, who want to have us killed. For one week, they just pretend to be super into pride and stuff, and chief among them is Bud Light, right? To the point that they faced a backlash last year and people were like, making, I think Kid Rock shot a case of Bud Light, but it’s you already bought it, you idiot.

Canidae: I, yeah, I never understand that

kind of protest.

Steeeve: watered down American rice pilsner is gay, and it’s I think that’s you projecting, but, okay, I’m not a beer guy anyway the fact that I don’t want beer, I don’t want heatstroke, I definitely don’t want to Pay for a ticket to go to a fucking pride parade kept me home this year and comfortably seated in my air conditioned bedroom.

So

Tarro: Was it the new parade that we wanted to charge or was it the old one trying to shake

Steeeve: it was the old one trying to charge. It was really weird.

Tarro: No

Steeeve: But then, that came up in the news and then they’re like part of it’s free. It’s like, why is any of it not free? What the hell’s wrong with you people?

Canidae: It’s just been really gross especially with everyone trying to be like, oh yeah, it’s a kids thing it’s all colorful, just parade, basically and therefore we have to kick all these specific kind of queers out.

Because they don’t fit in with this shiny model of pride we’re trying to do.

And it’s listen,

pride is not that.

Pride has always been we’re not going to shut up

Steeeve: okay. I’ve faced the same criticism even within the zoo community from other zoos, because a lot of the previous sticker designs were like really risque. And they’re like, you’re giving us all a bad name. You should be more puritanical. You’re zooing wrong. And it’s I don’t think that’s really I don’t think you get to tell me that I’m zooing wrong, but okay, whatever.

Make your own stickers with less sex in them,

Canidae: yeah, absolutely. I actually thought about picking up my own sticker printer to print out the flag and stuff. Because I saw

what

Steeeve: should. You

Canidae: cool, but also I don’t want to slap it in some

areas. That would be prime for a

Steeeve: Yeah. And it makes sense for me to, order in batches of a thousand because I’m sending them all over the world. But if wanted to make more variety of stickers and design your own and you didn’t need a thousand of them, then yeah, that’d make all the sense in the world to print them yourself.

Canidae: Absolutely. If I ever get on disability or something, I am getting a sticker for it, too.

Steeeve: Look out world. I saw a pretty elegant solution to the like do we make it family friendly or do we make it like extra spicy for the pride parade? In another city, where along the parade route, they had two different grandstands. With two different announcers and one announcer was like, I don’t know if I’m like a local news station happened to be a lesbian lady and they had her just like competently announce who was coming by at that particular time.

But then a little further down and they build it this way. They said, and that we all have, we have spicy commentary at this mile marker. And they had this really super witty, catty drag queen, who was like, Oh, you’re not gonna believe what they did on Grindr last night. And then, oh, look at that outfit, I can see legs for days.

All the legs. They were just like constantly giving like a saucy commentary and everything. And it was a lot of fun. And you, if you were like a parent that wanted to bring your kids to Pride, could decide which spice level you They were ready for it, so I thought that was like a pretty elegant solution to that because maybe you’re not ready to have that conversation with your kid.

Maybe they’re not old enough, to process that yet, and you’re not trying to introduce that before they’re ready,

yeah,

totally get it.

Canidae: I totally get it, too. I also totally don’t get why sometimes someone will look at my collar and say that one person has told me I’m genuinely sexually assaulting them by wearing a collar in front of them. And I was

Steeeve: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Canidae: are you talking

Steeeve: Someone who’s like a like a furry he’s a furry, but he’s like a zoo ally. And I didn’t, he goes to conventions way more than me and is like way more immersed in that culture. And he said they have a name for that and they’re called Puritines.

Yeah, I don’t know they, they got Puritines out there, but apparently that’s a thing. And it’s teenagers who

want to sex shame everyone.

Canidae: They’d come and join this community that has been

around for decades, and has been

sexual for decades. And they’re like, no, this isn’t what this

is about, I’m here now, go away. And it’s no, just curate your

spaces, my guy. You don’t need to go and tell

Steeeve: it’s like Yiff Prohibition or, I would call it performative outrage, right?

Canidae: Yeah, absolutely, I would

Steeeve: it’s not sincere,

Tarro: What are you saying, Lovecat?

Lovecat: In the mid 90s, when I was a teenager and I found the furry fandom, I knew exactly what I was looking for, and the cute art is definitely dope and I definitely like it, but that’s not what, that’s not what I was searching for.

Canidae: Yeah, no, I found the furry fandom through looking for

Steeeve: like lust cat, am I right? Oh, pew!

Tarro: Lovecat, I thought you were supposed to be the angel on the shoulder. What happened?

Steeeve: Oh he’s gone.

The Puritans got him. Lovecat’s been

canceled.

Tarro: You’re actually someone I want to ask this to, Steve, because I think you have an interesting opinion here. So much of quote unquote, queer progress has been through the lens of I would consider pretty disruptive acts. Stonewall, for instance, was not like a family friendly fun event where everyone was having a great time.

And I think likewise a lot of the times when queer people are fighting for their rights it does have to get a little bit messy. And through the lens of us as zoos and our movement, obviously we’re pretty far away from a stone wall, don’t get me wrong, but, like, where’s the level of what you think is what we need to be aiming for, what’s maybe too much?

What’s the best way to still represent ourselves in a positive way, but while also enacting change? the first time I was ever on Zooier Than Thou was the first season and it was their, I think their pride episode. So now we’re on season six. I’ve been at this a little while now, apparently.

God, you’re

so proud! Oh my

Steeeve: And I think what I said, I hoped for the zoo community. Is that we can just be left alone to live our normal, boring lives, however we see fit. And where the fact that we’re zoos is not the first or even second or even third thing that is the most interesting thing about us.

Yeah. And that’s, and I, six seasons in, I still definitely feel that way. That’s what I’m hoping for is that, it’s just like with, in, in sociology, they would call that an unmarked category. Just if you’re watching the news and somebody commits a crime, if it’s a white person, they don’t tell you that.

Usually. But if it’s anybody who isn’t white, they’re like, this Korean person committed a crime. They want to let you know it’s a marked category. But if you’re in the majority,

you’re the

category. And I would love it if whenever like a zoo person, Did something shitty. They didn’t feel it necessary to tell us that they happen to be a zoo, this zoo is convicted of tax evasion. It’s exactly, who fucking

cares, man?

Was it zoo tax evasion? Did they avoid zoo taxes? Is this animal related in any way? No. So yeah, that would be great if we could just be normal criminals or normal people living their lives doing, normal shit.

And then, if it didn’t happen to be zoo related, then people just, didn’t find that necessary to even mention or think about, like a black guy committed tax evasion. Is it black taxes? Like, why tell us that? What the fuck? This is so racist,

I think we’re just starting to see where you can have a villain like respectably rendered and happens to also be gay and we’re not forced to conclude that they must be a villain because they’re gay, or that having gayness about them made them a villain.

And that has been the case before where someone was like, Oh he’s gay. So he’s bad or he’s gay. So he’s like a giant caricature of a gay person. And like on Will and Grace, we saw that where you’d have one pretty normal person who just happened to be gay. And then you had a cartoon of a gay person on the show.

And, yeah. There was a show about people with cybernetic video game interface head implants that let them talk to the future and it turns out they’re in a pocket universe. It’s Don’t watch the show, it’s bad, but they happen to have a trans cop from the future, and the fact that this person is trans is totally not related to them being a cop.

They just they’re a cop that happens to be trans, and also they’re from the future, and they’re really good at their job. And that’s all you need to know we don’t, we’re not exploring this Transness. And in the future, apparently, they’re past all that. And so no one even mentions it.

No one’s damn, dude, you’re a snappy dresser.

Canidae: Yeah, I remember,

there’s a , a show called Another Life on Netflix and there’s a trans and or non binary character in there and it almost never comes up that they’re trans and they even get to have an on screen complex relationship with another character, which was fantastic to see and I’m pretty sure they also had some polyamory going on in there, but it was weird the way they handled that.

Lovecat: So to take it back to the example of stickers Steve as you were saying, and as we know your especially initial stickers were like they’re very confrontational.

They’re very in your face, and Hey, here’s this, deal with it or don’t,

Steeeve: now that they’re a little mellower

now,

Lovecat: they, they are but, and that’s not a criticism. It’s, I’m just highlighting the the approach that they take. The one that you’re funding now is it’s a lot more I guess mellow is actually the word for that where it’s taking, the approach of like furry aesthetics and and harmonizing with those it’s coming from a different direction and these are two directions to the same goal and I think that overall, both of these things are what we need it’s like we, we need people out there loud and proud, not going away, deal with this.

And, we need people who are like, look we’re already here. We’re already a part of this. You just didn’t know, you just didn’t recognize. And now we’re becoming more visible and that can be translated into, any avenue, of of activism at all, basically. There are different ways to say, to serve the same purpose, and I think it’s just more important that everybody, takes a look at what their own proclivities are, and what works best for them, sometimes the confrontational is the way to go, and sometimes the chiller is the way to go, and sometimes the artistic is the way to go, and, sometimes the brainy long essay is the way to go.

And that’s the thing. it’s such an open expanse to us right now because, most of this has never been done before. So it’s, we’re pretty free to, to figure out, how we’re going to do this. And there’s no playbook really to go by.

We do have examples from other movements and stuff, but not everything works for every, particular issue. we exist in certain constraints, but we don’t have certain other constraints. So I think that, what we’re doing, it’s going to inevitably be unique.

And I think that’s probably the the winning aspect of it, uniqueness.

Tarro: that’s it. it’s so cool that there’s so many amazing different people in the community Horsephile Zeta, very fun person on Twitter if you’re familiar past 10k followers, really great. All that he does is he just goes on to posts that are like shaming zoos and just replies and says hey, zoos are cool, actually.

And it’s just like very direct. He gets so much hate for it. It’s really crazy to look at sometimes. But it’s just it’s very calm, it’s very tempered, it’s very positive and that’s such a different angle of doing things from someone like like even Steve, or like early episodes of the Zoop podcast and stuff, and, but you need all sorts of different people to come and bring those perspectives, because different things are going to resonate with different people, and different messages are going to be louder to different people, and it’s great.

Ha

Steeeve: the latest batch of stickers,

Lovecat: you need that, balls out fuck you

Steeeve: yeah, I got feedback, cause people are not shy about contacting you either to order stickers or to let you know that they want you to die. Yeah. And and it’s, you just never know, but you, you know that you’re doing something when people get pissed off at you, but it’s weird because if you respond to that feedback just for funsies, so say I made a bunch of really explicit stickers, which I did, and people wrote in and said, look, I think you’ve gone too far.

These are too sexy. And then you make stickers that aren’t as sexy. People write in and say, look, I think your stickers are not sexy. Sexy enough and I want them to be sexier. So it’s !

Who do you listen to at that point, right? I don’t know any of these people So it’s you’re just gonna have to listen to your conscience.

This one I felt like I was Consciously trying to find a balance where it was pretty palatable to the general public and didn’t have anything that was obviously objectionable from a pretty broad viewing angle, right? But if you knew what you were looking for and the O’s in the word zoo are cookies.

Then, it’s like a hidden signal, a dog whistle, if you will, and then you would know Ah, look, they did, they made those cookies. But if you didn’t know what a dog vulva looked like, then you shouldn’t be able to pick that out from the design, are you looking at the design?

Canidae: shit. I just now no, I just now

realized that there are

Steeeve: Yeah! I think a lot of people spay their dogs, and so they never go into heat, and so their vulva is really small. Yeah. Unless you look at one that’s in heat or really sexually active you would never see that shape. And, again, unless you were looking at a bunch of feral porn made by people who look at photo references of dogs in heat,

you know? We know where it comes from. But yeah, I think a lot of people wouldn’t immediately recognize those O’s as dog vulvas. And

Canidae: so that makes me

Steeeve: You dirty dog.

Lovecat: Ha. Ha

Steeeve: That’s

funny.

Lovecat: Ha. Ha. Ha.

Canidae: Before I was just like, Anyone and their grandma will recognize what this is.

Steeeve: That’s fun.

Tarro: I wanted to ask Kennedy specifically how would you say that your zoeyness interacts with your queerness? Are those like the same thing? Are they different things?

Canidae: They are very much the same for me. I closeted about my transness extremely early. I think my earliest memory is even coming out as trans, basically. Back before I had any words for that properly. But Yeah, I realized I was zooey really early on, again didn’t have the language to talk about it, and also did not live with people who I thought it would ever be safe to talk about with it. So I was extremely closeted about being zoo, and being trans, and all of the other ways I’m queer and anytime I thought about oh no, what if something of mine comes out? It has always been just as disastrous for me for any part of my identity. I was always afraid of it. So it affects it pretty heavily, and it also since it’s my orientation it affects my human relationships as well. I’m attracted to my partners, but sometimes I can be visibly horny but just not towards any of the humans, and I don’t have any other non human companions, so it’s I’m just sitting there frustrated, and they’re looking at me like what the fuck’s up we’re right over here, and I’m like I’m just not in that kind of headspace right now,

Tarro: It’s always so funny to me because I see this conversation sometimes on the internet where it’s like, Oh being a zoo isn’t an orientation because an orientation is being attracted to a certain gender and an animal isn’t a gender and it’s you’re so missing the point. What are

Canidae: severely.

Yeah, real. But yeah, it heavily affects my queerness. Like I said earlier, I have come out to every one of my partners before we actually started dating because it is such a core part of myself that I felt like if I really let someone get close to me and let myself care about them that much it would just absolutely be soul shattering if one day they found out I’m zoo and just end up kissing me. Immediately assuming I’m a monster or some shit that has lured them or something.

So I just can’t handle it. And also I’m out to my mom and my mom is so openly accepting of so many different kinds of queerness. And we had talked about a lot of different stuff up to that point. And I was just like, all right, you know what, I’m just going to come out to you. And my mom was like, Yeah, that’s fine. And not surprising at all. Because I

just

Tarro: cool!

Canidae: in myself.

Tarro: Yeah. No I love that. What about you, Lovecat? Do you feel like there’s like an overlap there between your queerness Are those basically the same word?

Lovecat: No, they’re not. My human sexuality and my zoo sexuality are very distinct from each other, although I’m fine with that. Just throwing them both under the rubric of queer. But I also think that sexuality in general is just pretty queer. As far as that goes, but I’m attracted to male humans and female animals.

With humans, there’s, there’s also gender involved, and, my gender is very sparkle pony very effeminate. With animals, that doesn’t matter at all. If I could imagine that if I was zoo exclusive, I would be, like, very drab in appearance. I wouldn’t care about that, probably.

Canidae: I’ve heard a lot of people say gender

is a performance.

so like if you’re around

a bunch of other humans, you’re going to be performing that gender.

Tarro: Yeah, and I mean

are mostly colorblind, right?

Lovecat: and, the, and then there’s just the two different, sexual orientations, like one’s, pretty homo and the other’s, pretty hetero. They’re just, in, in my mind, those are two very different drives, even though they’re both sexual, and they don’t cross over that much.

Occasionally that’s the mood, but not. Not generally,

Tarro: What about you, Steve? Because I feel like you’ve been saying a lot this episode that you’ve been mostly attracted to females, but I’ve also heard what you get up to at truck stops.

Steeeve: For a good time called Steve. Yeah historically I’ve only been interested in female characters. Non human animals, but with humans it’s been a lot more fluid in terms of like gender identity and expression, right? So mostly attracted to cisgendered female humans, but historically also in long term loving, intimate, intense relationships with male identified.

persons, be them cisgendered or trans guys and non binary people and everyone in between. I feel like gender expression really has a lot of range and to the extent that putting a convenient label how we think of someone else’s gender identity and expression is a labor saving measure. If you see somebody who’s wearing a police uniform and they’re on duty and they’re in a police car and, then. I’m not asking myself what kind of town they grew up in and how Catholicism influenced their sexuality I’m just like, yeah, that’s a cop over there. I don’t, I’m not looking to see their gender identity or expression.

I’m just like, yeah, that’s a cop. I should probably not drive super fast right now. That’s the context that I put them into a neat little box. And the fact that’s a person with a whole lived experience in history and gender identity, like it blew my mind the first time I met a trans cop and right.

And it’s but why not a trans cop for one, but also none of the other cops knew. And also why would they, why is that important? And if they knew, they would probably freak the fuck out, but didn’t they? But it wasn’t relevant to police work. So I just mentioned a science fiction program that has trans cops.

But I know a real trans cop, yeah, who served, I don’t know, like 26 years on the police force as a beat cop and retired from the police. The whole time, none of his colleagues had any idea that he was a trans guy, he just, he passed really well and it wasn’t germane to driving a police car and carrying a gun and shit, so What does it fucking matter?

I’m way more interested in, hey, do you like my cooking, whoever you are? And if the answer is no, then I don’t care how you dress or how you consider yourself in terms of gender identity and expression, because this is not going to work.

Lovecat: Hahahaha. you were saying about labels earlier I remember, I tell this to people often when they are having identity issues, like they’re freaking out about which labels do I use, I’ve always been with this label and now I’m so confused labels are not supposed to be an absolute definition that perfectly describes someone.

Canidae: What they’re supposed to be is this queer thing is just. Constantly searching yourself, and learning who you are, and trying to guide who you want to be. And the labels are just there to help other people, at a glance, find out some of what you found while you were searching.

Without having to write them a fucking book. yeah. There’s a lot of people that they just don’t want to put a lot of thought into your lived experience and your gender expression and so they just want like a convenient label and maybe they put that there just so that they can get on with their life, but maybe they put it there because they want to demonize you.

Steeeve: And make you the other as rationale for the horrible things they’re about to do to you. That being the case, I understand why people would

want

Those labels. Historically I’m happy to live by my record and say yeah, this is the stuff that, You know, these are the kinds of interactions that I tend to favor, right?

Canidae: Yeah. Absolutely. You all were talking about your orientations, and I realized I didn’t really go into mine at all. When it comes to humans, I’m generally very lesbian, but a while ago I realized that I can also be attracted to any human who has a good enough personality. So I call myself a bi lesbian in those regards. It gets me a lot of hate online. But then when it comes to canines, I’m generally attracted to men. Like I did have a female partner at one point, but like I wasn’t really interested in her, in,

In like her parts or anything like that. more the

fact that she liked to dry hump me. So yeah, when it comes to non humans my sexuality is a bit different.

Tarro: See, that’s not to try and say that’s not valid by any means, I just, it’s so confusing for me because I’m like perfectly bisexual between humans, between animals I just love to hop in there and get down and dirty. And so whatever people have even like just with humans, my non zoo friends, if they’re like, Oh yeah, I only like men, I’m like, you’re missing out on so

And then when it comes to

zoos as well, when it’s like, Oh yeah, I like male humans, but female animals, and It’s I just like, to my brain, it’s like,

what is there? It, it

really

doesn’t make sense to

Steeeve: Yeah, I just, don’t like getting fucked in my ass. and male animals generally want

Tarro: ha

Steeeve: So, yeah, that’s like a deal breaker for me. Oh, by the way, for the people that think that I’ve had a sci fi related stroke the TV show that I keep referencing is called The Peripheral. It was produced by Amazon. And the character that I’ve been referencing is called Inspector Ainsley Lobier. Who is played by Alexandra Billings as a trans

man.

Tarro: Speaking of trans people, it feels like

within the zoo community there’s a pretty

number of trans people or people that identify without being cis and I was just curious if you guys had any guesses as to like why that is?

Canidae: Um, I do have a few thoughts. I was seeing the same kind of thing happening in furry communities. Just at large, they tend to notice a lot more trans people than the average population would. And some people were positing the ideas of the furry community tends to greatly encourage exploring your identity and embodying these other characters, like these fursonas and stuff. And a lot of trans people tend to end up exploring their identity through these fursonas. And, through roleplaying and all sorts of stuff. I think

the furry community tends to just crack a lot of eggs.

And the furry community does have probably a larger than average portion of zoos per capita as well. So I think some of the overlap might happen with the intersections of the furry community with zoo and trans communities.

Tarro: yeah, that totally makes sense. I also think that part of it might be just that like the visible zoo community anyway, if you’re looking for zoos. On average. It tends to be a fairly left leaning sort of thing and so it could be that there is a larger population of non trans zoos than we’re really even accounting for, but they’re just not the ones that are, like, on Twitter and on Telegram who are, like, excited to engage with all of these

Steeeve: there’s a lot of

Tarro: zoos and stuff.

Steeeve: zoos. there are far right wing conservative zoos out there. It blew my mind. I was like, oh

my god, And they’re like, no, I’m not gay. I’m just a zoo.

I have one further theory about the prevalence of

queerness in the furry community, and it’s this apart from, as you indicated, it being like a really supportive, pretty safe, nurturing kind of space, at its heart, it’s Fans of anthropomorphic art, right?

That was ostensibly the reason for the whole thing, right? that’s what they’re fans of in the furry fandom is anthropomorphic art and culture and expression and whatnot. As if you’re an artist, and there’s like a semi limited set of characters that you’re supposed to make art of at some point.

You’re going to run out of different ways to interpret those things, right? And you start getting really adventurous. If you’re an artist, like this should be really relatable you’ll remix things. And one of the first things that people do is they’ll gender swap stuff,

but then they’re like okay, we gender swapped him.

So now what if we play

with scale? What if we, mix gender? Like different gender icons. What if we, add boobs and 10 dicks? What if we make them lactate? What if we make them obese? What if we make them anorexic? What if they’re green now? What if they’re half mermaid and covered in fur?

And, and it’s they’re just madlibbing everything. Like they’re

Canidae: Yeah,

Steeeve: in their quest to just make something different. And also in a really supportive environment and where they’re supported and their ideas to I don’t know, let’s just, let’s get crazy with it, let’s mix it up.

I think you end up with a lot of like really random elements. And if you’re not, if you haven’t seen that progression and you just walk into it, it’s a lot, like all at once, or there was a lot of

people

Canidae: the first

time I saw Sparkledogs, I was like, what the

fuck is going on here? But nowadays, I’m like, I need to

make a

Sparkledog.

Steeeve: it’s tame. Or like, , the thing I’m seeing now is, , there’ll be like a slime sona

it’s a fur sona, but they’re just made out of like

gummy candy or

slime or something, like a slug.

Tarro: Pool toys were really big for a while as well. That was a big aesthetic.

Steeeve: or do my fursona but it’s an airplane?

Like a

passenger jet? I saw that one. And they’re like, but it’s got like ears and everything? And they’re like, yeah, why not? I’ve seen ones where it was like a furry wearing a fursuit of some other fursona. You’re like, it’s man, even my furries got furries. It’s and I think

if you consider that like a fursuit had to start off as a concept drawing, right? And then you’re taking on literally like putting on the fursona when you wear a fursuit. You’re wearing a drawing in its own way. So then, how much do you identify with that character? Hopefully like a lot, maybe not, you can endlessly remix and copy and transform and recombine elements in a drawing, then you can also do that in a fursuit.

And then I think it’s not that far to think maybe that’s who I am as a person.

Canidae: Yeah, absolutely. Part of my actual coming out properly at my early 20s, was I was on a My Little Pony IRC, and we would watch the show as it aired, and I started roleplaying as one of the background characters in chat, and I was just like, huh, okay, so interacting with thousands of people as a woman feels pretty fucking

great, actually. So then I was just like, I’m gonna transition about it.

Tarro: Yeah.

Canidae: feel like that’s another big part of it is you’re encouraged to just even act out these characters sometimes.

And that alone like, Oh, good.

I dipped my toe in what that

was like, and I loved it.

Steeeve: Yeah. I mean, RuPaul famously came out and said that all of life is drag,

right? Whether you really identify with the gender you were assigned at birth and and you feel comfortable playing that character. You’re still playing a character. You’re still dressing up as a boy, even though, You were assigned boy at birth and you feel like a boy, you still chose to dress like a boy and act like a boy, whatever that means to you.

And you could be like a really femme boy, you could be a super bitch boy, you could be a stoic boy. You get to decide what kind of boy or girl or they, them, or non binary person or trans masculine person or trans femme person you want to be. Like there’s a whole spectrum that you get to decide how meaningful that is for you. Yeah, so generally, I’m not like a super pro police kind

of person, because

yeah, right? For a lot of reasons. But yeah, actually, he’s a, he happens to be a friend of mine, so I’m like,

well, maybe I should rethink how I feel about law enforcement vis a vis this one super transgressive, really queer cop, but also none of the other cops knew, so he was He’s I’m a cop first and the trans guy distant last apparently, I met, I went to his retirement party.

I met his whole family. They were the most Baptist people you could imagine, like from central casting Baptists, right? With like casseroles and everything. And, Y’know the fact that he was trans was like the last thing on anyone’s mind ever, if they even were aware of it at all. He had a cake in the shape of a cop car. And not like in trans flag colors or anything, there’s red and blue involved, but it’s because Could you be

more queer, please? No, I’m a cop! Yeah, man, so I, y’know there’s there’s no rules. Clearly. You get to decide.

Tarro: There is one more group of people that are queer that I wanted to mention a little

bit just because I feel like they don’t get enough representation and that’s asexual zoos. I

feel

like. I have seen so many awful takes on the internet about like even from other zoos talking about how Oh, if you’re an ace zoo, you just have a pet.

And it’s it’s so frustrating to me how people not only misunderstand asexuality, but also like other queer people will look at an ace person and be like, no, you’re doing it wrong.

Canidae: yeah, I hate seeing it online too, it’s what the fuck is wrong with you, why are you punching

on someone who’s just trying to hang out and vibe? with their queer identity,

Steeeve: Right, they get mad at us because we’re having too much sex, and then they’re also pissed off at ace people because they’re not having enough sex.

Tarro: Yeah.

Steeeve: like there’s just no pleasing some people.

Yeah. I used

Canidae: to identify as ace especially because I was severely closeted about being zoo. So I was like, when it comes to humans, which are probably the only relationships I’ll ever get to have, I’m ace. And my homophobic family would make remarks about gay

people having too much sex, and then, like, when I was like, I’m ace, they’re like, what, that means you’ll never have

sex?

I don’t

Steeeve: man, come on, live up to our

homosexual, fetishistic

Tarro: yeah.

Steeeve: of you.

Canidae: It’s ridiculous.

Tarro: Lovecat, what’s the difference between an asexual zoo and someone who just really likes their pets?

Lovecat: I think it’s in their own experience, they know for themselves what the depth of their feelings and devotions are, and if it’s something beyond what. We would, potentially agree on as just a really, somebody who really loves their pet. Basically when it comes to people, I try to just respect them on their own terms and understand them in the way that they understand themselves as much as I can.

And if somebody’s respect for their partner if that, Transcends, what we would call pet ownership, then, that’s love. it’s not, love with quotation marks around it. It’s just the thing. and I think that the whole, obviously the whole wall, if you’re a zoophile, you’re just a pet owner, that’s coming from a place of such blatant disrespect and the intention to misunderstand and misrepresent and, like I said before, my, my deepest emotional connection was to a cat and obviously there was nothing sexual between us that didn’t It doesn’t mean that I wasn’t a zoo during that time, and it doesn’t mean that, the love that I had for him was, anything other than what it was, and somebody wants to tell me that I was just a pet owner, it’s you can think that. It doesn’t change my experience. It would be nice if you would try to extend me at least the basic respect to another person of, acknowledging what I’m telling you my experience actually is.

So that’s how I feel about that. if, as far as validity goes, yeah, you know your own feelings, and of course they’re valid because they’re what you’re having. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re somehow, that you

don’t count or something, or you’re, that

you’re

not

this, or that you’re anything other than you know yourself to

Steeeve: Lovecat, I think you’re missing

the core concept of this though, which is that there is an objective

Lovecat: Yes?

Steeeve: threshold, and you either,

And you just crossed it buddy,

Lovecat: Oh, gee, son of a bitch, I thought you were being serious for a second there.

Steeeve: and I decided that for you, you’re Zoo now.

Tarro: were being serious for a second there.

Steeeve: with it. Hahahaha Yeah, I’ve taken a reading.

Lovecat: I

have looked at the rulebook

and

according to regulations,

Steeeve: It’s like people who see someone wear like a band T shirt and they’re like, You’re not a real fan of blah, blah, blah because blah, blah, blah and I’m the real one, you’re

fake.

What do you get from that? Apart from feeling like less of a miserable, insecure, garbage human, man. That doesn’t help anybody. If you’re a real gay, you’ll gobble my balls right now, you gay.

Tarro: it’s just, it’s so crazy as a

concept thinking of someone being like, Oh, you’re gay,

How much dick have you

taken? And it’s like, what? does that

Steeeve: what? what? Do I get to, do I get to pick which one first, at least?

Canidae: Goddamn.

Tarro: even like going up to a straight person being like, Oh, you’re a woman who likes men? Tell me. Do you fuck men every day? Because those are the only

days you’re

straight, really. It’s

the whole concept of defining sexuality around sex just makes

absolutely no sense to me. It’s

Lovecat: All right.

Steeeve: you’re a slave to my antiquated notions. Do it.

Lovecat: Oh, yeah.

Steeeve: It’s like, wow.

Tarro: And then, on the other side of the coin, I feel like there’s also aromantic people, and by extension, aromantic zoos, who also get a bad rap, because then they’re seen as people who like, Don’t have any care for their partners and are just in it for the sex. They’re the like, bestialists that you always hear about.

And I feel like that’s just as silly but something that also doesn’t get talked about. So shout out to the aromanticses out there who are amazing partners who just don’t experience a relationship in the same way.

Canidae: Absolutely. I had a very platonic relationship with a cat when I was growing up. And it was an incredibly zooey

platonic relationship. Non zoos just tend to not interact with pets the same way.

And yeah, I would say every part of that relationship was zooey, even though there was no physical or romantic aspect to it.

Tarro: and I’ve heard Toggle describe himself as aromantic before as well when it comes to zoo relationships and that’s super cool I don’t think anyone is questioning whether or not Toggle takes great care of the animals that are in his life

Canidae: absolutely.

Tarro: people are so narrow minded to what they view a relationship as possible and there’s so much more depth and so many more cool things out there that I feel like we just need to learn to be more accepting of

Canidae: Absolutely. It’s really surprising sometimes what some people just won’t realize is possible. I remember one time I was talking to my boyfriend, and I mentioned that sex doesn’t require penetration, because he was feeling nervous about ED. And He looked at me like I was insane, and was like, What do you mean sex doesn’t require penetration?

And I’m like, listen, I have been in

bed with someone for five hours, and not a moment of penetration

happened, but I would call every

Steeeve: I’ve noticed that my cat keeps having sex with my dog,

Tarro: Yep.

Steeeve: but the cat weighs 10 pounds and the dog weighs 65 pounds, and he can’t reach anything, so he just very,

Canidae: Oh no.

Steeeve: discreetly, gingerly climbs on her like he’s just gonna make bis and he does, he makes biscuits a little bit, he kinda kneads her with his paws, and she’s just asleep through this whole thing.

She’s not participating in this at all, or even aware of it.

He’s just having his whole zoo fantasy, this cat is. And he’ll like, bite down on her scruff, which she also doesn’t notice or feel or register at all. And then he’s, oh my god and also he’s So what is he going to do? And then he’ll start thrusting just randomly at some patch of fur, like on her back.

Canidae: that dog sleeps through anything.

Steeeve: Like he’s nowhere near the business end of this dog. And she again, sleeps through the whole thing. She’s not aware it’s even happening, but in his mind, he’s rocking her world. And then he and then. Rolls over and falls asleep. And the dog is none the wiser. Yeah, it’s, for him, he is just rocking her world and she is not even

aware of his existence.

Tarro: do.

Steeeve: Unbothered. Yeah, so I don’t know, she didn’t think they were having sex.

Canidae: Oh geez.

Steeeve: I don’t think, I think she’s not aware of it at all. Yeah, they get along pretty good. They like cuddle together and they do take turns chasing each other around and stuff. And they play well. They eat each other’s food. The dog considers cat food to be a rare exotic treat. And the cat for some reason thinks stealing dog kibble is an exotic rare treat. So they like do tradesies. Yeah, they’re zoos for each other.

Canidae: if you eat the same flavor all

the time, something else is just kinda nice.

Tarro: By definition, that’s awesome. I’m pretty sure we’ve covered literally every single queer topic that exists. Can’t think

of any

more off

the top of my head. so do you have any positive Zoo Pride messages to leave the audience with?

Steeeve: Yeah, stay alive. yeah, if you feel like, , there’s a lot of pressure, it’s probably not a lot. It’s probably just like one,

like one shark is scary, but the chances of you being bitten by one are infinitesimally small. It’s way more likely you’ll get smushed by a cow. Even if you’re nowhere near cows but it’s scary.

Sharks are scary looking. And so there’s a lot of shark movies and not a lot of like stampede movies, so if somebody’s hackling you for being a zoo, all that by way of saying that could be really scary. And if you feel like you’re all alone and that you’re misunderstood and you’re not supported, then it could be so scary that to escape it, you might in an impulsive, self destructive moment, decide to try to take your own life.

Please don’t do that.

Canidae: Yeah, please don’t. Life can be really long, and it can change in so many beautiful ways. It’s really not worth it.

Steeeve: we have an upcoming

episode on suicide awareness and prevention that we hope will be helpful

where we’re bringing a therapist on board who has extensive experience. Treating, depression, and suicide awareness and prevention training Anyway all that by way of saying usually people make that decision within about 10 minutes. So if you can survive for 10 minutes even then there’s a real good chance you’ll keep surviving. If you’re listening out there, that, that’s already a good sign because you’re already. Not as isolated as you could be, but you can, If you listen to this whole episode, you’ll either super want to kill yourself or you’ll,

the impulse will have passed, right?

Tarro: And because this episode is much longer than ten minutes.

Steeeve: Hopefully you like our voices and think we’re great and charming. Oh shit. Yeah. So yeah. You’re not alone. At all. There’s lots of zoos out there, even if you don’t know where they are especially that zoo that was going to Seattle. It’s like Zoo Central up there. I know because I’ve sent a lot of stickers there and I won’t tell you where, but I’ve sent a lot of stickers to Seattle and Washington in general and the Pacific Northwest.

So like you’re in good company. There’s a shit ton of zoos up there. Yeah, it’s the place to do it.

Canidae: Yeah, people tend to move to the Pacific Northwest to be queer, I’ve been told.

Steeeve: you’re not alone. You do have support and resources available and we really hope you’ll access them and keep on not just surviving, but thriving in hopefully some kind of really authentic, honored, supported expression of who you are as a person. I think that’s like the best way to do pride.

Canidae: Yeah. I was gonna answer Taro’s question there as well and it builds on what you were saying there. If you’re listening to this podcast and it’s like the only interaction you really have with the zoo community, or like maybe you sometimes poke around on Twitter or something, seriously, try to find community.

I know that zooey. pub has a discord server and it has been genuinely healing to be in it and talking to so many other wonderful people about how much they enjoy animals

and also just like their daily happenings in life. It helps you realize that we’re all just people and so are you.

You’re not a monster.

Lovecat: I think it’s good to keep in mind that Pride is responsive. It’s responsive to a situation that tries to erase queer people of all kinds. And that if you weren’t important and if it weren’t important, then they wouldn’t be trying so hard to erase it. And the more that you can accept, embrace, and love yourself and this part of you the more you’re going to develop as a human being and understand what you have to offer the world and what your duty is.

For me, I could never have foreseen how important and how defining embracing my zoophilia would become. And, still is becoming the first step of. Simply accepting is super duper important, but it doesn’t stop there. It doesn’t have to stop there and it it can really guide you in your life, actually, if you if you let it, and if you cherish it, and I think that’s true of Of everything that’s, true of an individual, but, sexuality is so central to, to who we are that yeah that’s a really important one that’s what, pride means to me.

I hope that I hope that helps some of you.

Tarro: yeah, and I would say, don’t forget that the animals in your lives, your partners, are also zoophiles by extension, if they are in a relationship with you. And, it’s important to remember that like Zoo Pride Week, for us is something that we can celebrate a lot more actively, that we’re a lot more aware of, but, make sure that you take some time and celebrate with them as well and, use this as an excuse to treat them super nicely, give them a special treat, take them somewhere super amazing.

Whatever it is that you do that they find special, this is a great opportunity to really spoil them for

Steeeve: Yeah, Every day should be Zoo Pride Day.

Canidae: I’m wanting to get a Zoo Pride flag to slap on my computer.

Tarro: Every day, Zoo Pride Day!

You know what? I’ll talk to Toggle about it. Zoo Pride Day, daily episodes

for think he’d really love it.

Steeeve: em?

Tarro: He’s always saying he wants to put out more content.

All right. Thank you so much for coming everyone to this special 2024 Zoo Pride Week episode, pride in General Episode. Really appreciate you being here.

And coming up next slightly more? Do we hear them now?

“The Coming Out Blues” (song)

Zipwok: I came out to my Papa

I came out to Mom

I came out to my Sister

I came out to my Bro

I came out to my Dog

And I feel alright

I came out to my Papa

I came out to Mom

I came out to my Sister

I came out to my Bro

Now I come out to you

And I feel alright

I came out to my Papa

I came out to my Mom

I came out to my Sister

I came out to my Son

I came out to my Dog and my Cat

I came out to You

Now I come out to you

And I feel alright

Outro

Tarro: Thank you friends

for listening to this special pride episode of Zoo Than Thou.

Lovecat: For our next episode, we’re going to be blasting some

tunes, so make sure to tune your radio to our station August 19th.

Steeeve: It’s going to be a ton of fun, and feature a bunch of brand new zoo music, so get ready to rock out!

Lovecat: You can subscribe to the podcast via our zoo

RSS feed. Just point your favorite podcast client at S Zoo, do wtf.

You can also check out our extensive bonus [email protected]. If you wanna show your

support financially, head on over to donate zoo.wtf.

Steeeve: A reminder that we have a forum that enables anonymous

submissions to the podcast on Our website, zoo.

wtf.

You can send us ideas, leave us feedback, or just give us

whatever zoo y thoughts are in your head.

Lovecat: If you’re looking at getting some zoo stickers, message at ZooStories on

Twitter.

Tarro: our podcast website is still

Zoo wtf.

That’s wtf. As in, why the fuck are you doing your Pride episode at the end of

July? Our Twitter is

at zoo than thou. Follow love ka at a cat who loves [email protected]. Steve at

Zoo Stories.

Check out Epiphany’s new account at Epiphany Pipes and

follow me

at here for the zoo. Also, check out zooey. pub,

share this podcast with any other zoos that might like it, especially ones that might

feel alone,

because I think we really talked a lot about that this episode. Until next

time, I’m Taro.

Steeeve: I’m Steve!

Lovecat: And I’m Lovecat, and you’ve almost finished listening to Zooier Than Thou. Stay defiant, fellow zoos. We’ll see you next time you feel like howling at the moon.