Collected here are many examples of furry artists reacting to 9/11. Many of these pieces are direct responses to the event itself immediately after it happened, while others are tributes and memorials created several years later. They have been collected from VCL, Yerf, Deviantart, and FurAffinity. This presentation is not intended to mock the artists; it is an anthropological record of a small subculture processing shared trauma through creative expression. Many strong emotions are on display here: rage, fear, grief, anger, gratitude, despair, and hope. Vows for revenge are interspersed between moments of quiet reflection and cries of grief. There is no normal way of reacting to attacks so horrific that they border on incomprehensible.

Art is an important way of processing trauma. Monstrous and difficult emotions become easy to understand once they've been channeled out of your mind and into a creative medium. When other people witness it, they can comprehend what you're feeling and maybe even share similar experiences or their own, which is a powerful means of validation and healing. I am a furry who remembers 9/11. The sentiments on display in this gallery are painfully familiar.

You might also be wondering who is behind all of this. I too am a furry who made 9/11 reaction art. I was 8 years old and I remember it like it was yesterday. I was waiting for my mom to get out of the bathroom so I could get ready for school when she came out with the shower radio playing. She told me that "bad people" (her words) had hijacked airplanes and flew them into skyscrapers in New York City. On TV, I saw people hanging out of the windows on the top floors of the North Tower. The image of groups of people falling to their deaths is burned into my memory. Nobody knew what would happen next. It felt like the end of the world, but I still had to go to school like nothing happened.

Even though I was not physically present in New York, 9/11 was deeply traumatic for me. I watched the towers fall over and over and over again because my parents couldn't peel their eyes away from the news for weeks. The constant exposure to mass death gave me severe anxiety-related mental health problems at a young age. To cope, I drew a lot of pictures, including dragons breathing fire on Osama bin Laden, dragons using magic to stop airplanes from flying into the Empire State Building, Osama Bin Laden being carried off by dragons, eagles hovering behind the World Trade Center, and dragons holding American flags. If I ever find these drawings, I will post them here.

9/11 still fascinates and horrifies me. I am less interested in the geopolitics of the event than I am in the people it affected. Every year I listen to the stories of ordinary people who were forced into impossible situations. I feel it is my duty to understand what they witnessed that Tuesday morning and feel it for myself, if only for a brief moment.