Webcomic / Furry Experience

"Comedy. Drama. Furries."

Started in August of 2009, Furry Experience follows the lives of Dawn, Ronnie, and Cat, three college age girls who share an apartment. According to author Ellen Natalie, most of the hijinks the girls get into are Based on a True Story from her own life or on a "what if" scenario in the area she lives in.

The story is a Slice of Life style that revolves around the girls' interactions at home, at college, and at work, alternating between showing them together and giving each A Day In The Lime Light.

And they're all funny animals, aka "furries".

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Furry Experience contains the following tropes:

• A Dog Named "Dog": Subverted; Cat is actually short for Catherine. Ronnie and Dawn thought for a moment her parents were just uncreative.
• Adjacent to This Complete Breakfast: Some cereal Cat is eating, which she says eat with a loaf of toast and a jug of orange juice and it's a balanced breakfast.
• Allergic to Love: Whenever Hunter, a husky, attempts to asks Cat out, she runs off in a panic.
  • The fact that he's the sketch class' nude model and she's seen him naked certainly doesn't help matters.
• Almost Kiss: Dawn and Brian; that's the trouble with having noses like that. She kisses him on the cheek right after, though.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: When she first moved in Cat's mother told her that she would have to come home if her roommates were sexually active.
• Annoying Younger Sibling / Bratty Teenage Daughter: Diana has a tendency to take things without asking, feeling her "special projects" justify it, which gets on both Brian's and their mother's nerves. She also tends to procrastinate on her homework.
• Art Evolution: It started with a more crude, scratchy look to it, and has gradually shifted toward a much smoother appearance along with brighter colors. For comparison, Exhibit A and Exhibit B.
• Art Shift: Lampshaded when colors were first used.
• Author Avatar: Natalie has stated she most closely identifies with Cat, but that all three girls contain aspects of her personality.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Dawn doesn't want to work for a "wasteful, arrogant, indecisive pig." She gets her wish.
• BFS: One of Dawn's coworkers carries one. Well, it's technically a knife.

• Brick Joke: The Drama Llama makes his appearance at last.
• Burger Fool: Ronnie's workplace, Gulp-N-Go.
• Butt-Monkey: When Brian is around Dawn the world seems to conspire against him and cause him to get into all sorts of accidents.
• Call-Back: With Luke there to reign in his exuberance, Hunter is finally getting that date with Cat. Right now, however, it's just "lunch between friends," something Cat is much more comfortable with.
• I Call It "Vera": Dawn's coworker, Mousetta, with the knife.
  "Sometimes I think you're my only friend, Stabby."
• Carnivore Confusion: Lampshaded.
• Cannot Spit It Out: For the longest time, Brian just couldn't work up the nerve to ask Dawn out on a date.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The arc where Ronnie tries to go to church.
• Character Tic: Cat has a tendency to wring her tail when she's nervous.
• Chekhov's Gun: This tree.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Hilariously used in this arc.
• Contrived Coincidence: Jane Doe wants to introduce her daughter to Brian. Brian tells her he's already interested in someone. Readers know that both are talking about the same doe, Dawn.
  • Cat just happening to have a car when she and Ronnie are following Dawn. Lampshaded thoroughly of course.
• Cool Big Bro: David absolutely idolizes Hunter, especially since he thinks he's a secret agent who fights pirates.
• Cute Little Fangs: Cat has these, but these only show when she smiles or when she is angry.
• Dangerous Workplace: A downplayed example in the call center Dawn works in. No one has had a violent death (yet, we're still waiting on Crazy Mousetta for something like that), but the work is so mind-numbingly dull that workers have simply died in their seats, probably from their brains just shutting down.
• Day in the Limelight: Several of the comic's secondary characters have had an arc dedicated to them
  • Brian, Dawn's classmate, as he volunteers at the hospital and tries to ask Dawn out on a date
  • Vikki, Ronnie's friend, as she and Ronnie get roped into shenanigans with Vikki's über-Mormon roommates.
  • Hunter, Kat's sketch class model (and Love Interest), as he tries to find a new job. A second one has him and Luke apartment hunting.
  • Diana, Brian's sister, trying to get her master plan going while clashing with the local Alpha Bitch.
  • And now, said Alpha Bitch is getting an arc to herself, and geez, talk about a Perspective Flip.
  • Helen, one of Vikki's roommates, has one where she tries to work up the courage to watch an ultra-violent Game of Thrones Expy with Vikki and Ronnie.
  • One of Vikki's other roommates, Sarah, getting into Serious Business involving a plate.
• Deadpan Snarker: Ronnie most of the time. Luke has some pretty good snarks in him, too.
• Death Glare: Dawn has one. She gets it from her father.
• The Ditz: Cat.
  "I just figured out the newspaper joke!"
  • Also:
  Cat: ...I just realized something. I have living, fully functional skull in my head. Right. Now.
  Ronnie: I can't believe some people buy drugs for this same thought process.
• Dope Slap: Ronnie gives Cat one after she says something stupid.
• Dressed to Plunder: Hunter's friend Luke has to dress up as a pirate for an interview at a pirate themed restaurant. Here's the whole crew.
• Ears as Hair:
  • Ronnie styles her long rabbit ears as if they were long hair. However, she also has four sets of piercings.
  • Dawn keeps her ears down, most of the time, as she typically wears more formal clothes. It should be noted that other does have been seen with actual hair.
  • Alice, from Diana's high school, is an Afghan Hound/Labrador Retreiver and has long ears that hang down her back, which she has a tendency to smooth back like they were long tresses. Given the coats on Afghans though, a good portion of it may actually be hair.
  • Fleur, a poodle, has ears that look just like hair from the front.
• Embarrassing Pyjamas: Brian from arrives at his morning class at Furry Valley U wearing pyjama bottoms; other students also have very casual attire. Then in walks Dawn, groomed and dressed as if for a board meeting. She sits next to Brian, who then realizes his rocket-ship pyjamas are Dawn's antithesis. He flees in panic in the Friday 4 November 2011 installment.
• Everyone Is Single: Dawn only just recently started dating Brian, a buck. The other girls don't have boyfriends.
  • Hunter, Cat's sketch class' nude model, has asked her out at least three times. Each time, she's run off in a panic.
• Faint in Shock: As part of a "walk a mile" experiment, Kat and Ronnie change places and assignments at college. When Ronnie reports that she skipped out on Figure Drawing class because it had a live nude model, Kat faints in strip #137. Kat's teacher subtracts a grade for each missed class, which will gank her grade average. Any grade below 3.5 means Kat's parents will stop subsidizing Kat's tuition.
• Fanservice Model: Hunter is a Mr. Fanservice model in Furry Valley U's figure drawing class. Poor introvert Catherine can barely look at his naked self while sketching his poses, and even her brash roommate Rhonda had to bail on one class because Hunter "was ... well ... hot."
• Four-Girl Ensemble: Has moved towards this.
  • Cat is the sweet-naïve one, almost painfully naïve at times
  • Dawn is the wise Team Mom, even if her ideas don't always work (see Swapped Roles)
  • Ronnie has taken the role of the mannish Deadpan Snarker, while helping Vikki adjust to life in Utah
  • Vikki is the sexy one, a foxy lady if you will, attractive, not afraid to show it off, and the most boy-crazy out of all of them.
• Freud Was Right: After Ronnie subjects Cat to "Sex Ed" lessons, she lets her have a reprieve to watch some TV. Before long, Cat comes to a realization:
  Cat: Everything on T.V. is about sex! Even on the cartoon channel!
  Ronnie: How else will I know if my lessons are working?
• Freudian Excuse: The reason for Ronnie's distrust of religion is that Her childhood best friend went on a mission and told her to stop communicating with him, believing that she was a "distraction".
• Furry Confusion: Just what would a furry comic in a world of anthropomorphic animals look like?
• Furry Reminder: On a number of occasions:
  • Cat's "Mama Cat Bath" where she licks herself clean. And coughs up hairballs later.
  • When her nails grow out, they come from between her fingers or seemingly from her knuckles. This is not how cat claws work at all in real life ^note  they're actually more like nails, but much more strongly connected to the ends of the last joint in each toe bone. but it's cleared intended as a Furry Reminder nonetheless.
  • Pack mules actually charge people to carry their over-sized backpacks across campus.
  • Dawn getting cloven-hooved shoes.
  • Cat's Grandma has a habit of climbing the Christmas tree.
  • Brian files his antlers in the morning, like one would file fingernails
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Cat has a bunch of stuffed animals that she builds a nest with to curl up in when she's feeling down.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Despite the Cluster F-Bomb mentioned earlier, Ronnie drops "heck" here. The Alt Text lampshades it:
  Everyone says "heck". Even those with a wider range of profanity in their vocabularies.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Alice wants to be with Louis, and thinks Diana is getting in her way. As if to drive the point home, she actually does have green eyes.
• Hopeless Suitor: Alice is one for Louis, as he only has eyes for Diana.
• Hotter and Sexier: Lampshaded and subverted. Ronnie is very secretive about her job, leading the others to think she's a stripper.
• I Call It "Vera": Dawn's coworker's knife is named Stabby.
• I Read It for the Articles: Cat's Goals, where she wants to buy a Playboy magazine to see what the articles are like, since everyone's reading them. The Alt Text comments: "Every time you find out someone has a Playboy magazine, they protest they have it for the articles."
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Cat can't hit Ronnie with snowballs even when she's three feet in front of her.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: As Vikki drags Ronnie to institute, Ronnie is trying to tell her how all the Mormon students inside will be chattering away with their self-righteous gossip, until they open the door to dead silence.
  Vikki: God heard you and made them shut up.
  Ronnie: You hush.
• The Internet Is for Porn: Cat finds this out the hard way.
• Lampshade Hanging: What would a furry zoo look like?
• Love Triangle: Alice is in love with Diana's friend Louis. Louis is in love with Diana, as she was the one to help him find his confidence. Diana, however, is in love with her career.
• Look, a Distraction!: When Vikki is asking why Ronnie's so anti-Mormon:
  Ronnie: Hey, look! A cute guy's giving away free popcorn!
• Medium Awareness: An odd example. Cat is studying to draw furry comics, despite being a furry.
• Moral Guardians: Cat's friend Courtney manages to find immoral messages in nursery rhymes.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: One of Vickie's Halloween costumes when she was a kid was a princess samurai ballerina
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Cat celebrates completing a research paper by doing her "happy peanut butter dance." Her roommate Ronnie happens by, and records the whole thing on her phone. To Cat's chagrin, Ronnie has made this song-and-dance into her ringtone.
• Pass the Popcorn: Cat and Ronnie have a discussion here.
• Perspective Flip: The first time we meet Alice, it looks like a standard Alpha Bitch, out to ruin Diana's career in fashion design before it even starts. A hundred strips later, and we see things from Alice's perspective. It turns out that Alice is generally a nice person. However, she sees Diana as a con artist, a glory hound, and her romantic rival.
• Punny Name:
  • Dawn's mother's name is Jane Doe. Take a moment.
  • Cat's parents are named Tom and Kitty.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Used by Cat and Dawn to get Ronnie's father to take them to a nice restaurant they both want to go to.
• Removed from the Picture: In the Thursday 4 February 2010 strip, Ronnie tears a photo of her then-boyfriend and herself right down the middle. She's not so much falling out of love with the boyfriend, as she's infuriated by the Mormons and their regimented services. She has to nix him as a dating prospect when he'd made it clear he put his devotion to his faith ahead of his feeling for Ronnie.
• Running Gag:
  • Cat running from Hunter whenever she gets embarrassed.
  • Employees dropping dead at the call center.
  • Dawn and Brian having bad luck whenever they get together.
  • Ronnie and Vikki finding weird books at a discount bookstore.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Vikki gets one for a double date she's going on with Mariah.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Concession of all things.◊
  • Cat has a Rainbow Dash doll.
• Shrinking Violet: Cat. She hates meeting new people, but is very friendly around her friends.
  • Helen is quite softspoken and shy, even when talking to people she knows.
• Simple-Minded Wisdom: Dawn comes across Cat lying in the grass
  Dawn: Cat, what are you doing?
  Cat: Looking at clouds.
  Dawn: Now? Why?
  Cat: Because one day, I'll be old with a bad back and poor eyesight.
  Contemplative Beat
  Dawn joins her
• Snow Means Cold: Cat is excited over the first snowfall of the year, for all of five seconds.
• Species Surname:
  • Cat's last name is Feline.
  • Dawn last name is Doe.
  • Dawn is also seen at the call center trying to reach a Ms. Canine.
  • Ronnie's friend who went on a mission is Elder Lepus.
• Squick: In-Universe example. Dawn's reaction to Cat giving herself a tongue bath.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Cat gains the ability to do this just when Hunter is deciding he needs to ask her out.
• The Stoic: Hunter's friend Luke possesses a grand total of four facial expressions: neutral, a little miffed, slightly nervous, and a bit surprised.
• Swapped Roles: Cat and Ronnie for a week (Dawn's idea), needless to say it was disastrous.
• Sweetheart Sipping: After Hunter spills a smoothie on Cat, he offers to buy her one, then suggests they share one. Cat imagines the two of them doing this and bolts.
• Sweat Drop: Ronnie and her father's reaction to Cat and Dawn's Puppy-Dog Eyes.
• Symbol Swearing: A black box instead.
• The Talk: Cat never actually had one, her dad bailed on her, and her mom's explanation left her thinking kissing would get her pregnant. Ronnie takes it upon herself to educate the poor girl.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: An In-Universe example — after learning that parents are more cautious around Halloween and doing "trunk-or-treats" (a bunch of parents setting up their cars in a parking lot and letting the children go car-to-car to get their candy) instead of traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating, the cast laments that children nowadays will never get to enjoy Halloween the way they did. They realize the flaw in this belief when a group of kids, who had grown up with the new way of things, shows up to gush about how much fun they have with trunk-or-treats and lament that their parents never got to enjoy Halloween the way they do.
• Viewers Are Morons: And so are a lot of people coming into Ronnie's workplace.
• Virginity Makes You Stupid: One arc focused on Cat's complete ignorance of anything related to sex.
  • It hits major levels of idiocy on this page.
• Yiff: none seen onscreen, but Cat doesn't understand what she's seeing until Dawn explains it.

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