Verification Quest – Eli Y.

Tracing Furry Panic in the States.

For a long time now, early schooling has been a place for play and imagination. Playgrounds are ripe with made-up games and rules that often engage in role-playing activities. In fact, role-playing has been cited as beneficial for childhood development and is heavily encouraged as a social tool for children. Many children “play house,” dictating imaginary roles of parent and child, and we can’t forget the infamous dog role. Animals are a large part of childhood, and it’s somewhat inevitable that children would play imagination games centering animals. Some of the very first knowledge we gain as children is the ability to name and act out different animals. And, a large part of childhood media whether it be books, toys, television center around animals. 

With both imaginative play and animals being so prevalent in childhood you would think this is not a large issue, or something under large amounts of scrutiny. However, in recent bathroom politics, the idea of children pretending to be animals has become a hot topic.

I first encountered this issue on Instagram where I saw Texas representative, James Talrico, pushing back against the proposed “F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act,” standing for “FORBIDDING UNLAWFUL REPRESENTATION OF ROLEPLAYING IN EDUCATION”; this bill was proposed in a Texas legaslative session. The proposed bill “prohibit(s) any non-human behavior by a student, including presenting himself or herself, on days other than exempt days, as anything other than a human being.” Exempt days being Halloween or dress-up days promoted by a school itself; there are also exemptions for events like plays or those who may be a school mascot. However the bill specifies that dress-up days cannot have a theme that is  “primarily related to the history or celebration of a biological or artificial species other than homo sapiens,” and if you were thinking about being an animal in a play, better make sure the play is district funded or held by a sponsored theatre organization. 

The bill goes on to define non-human behavior as “any type of behavior or accessory displayed by a student in a school district other than behaviors or accessories typically displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species.” The bill goes on to define these accessories and behaviors that are specifically prohibited.​​ The list of banned behaviors immediately starts with the prohibition of litterboxes in school bathrooms, and moves onto things like meowing, self-grooming, pet accessories, fur/tails, and “surgical means of features that are non-human.” 

Governor Abbot heavily supported the bill and can be quoted saying, “Kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms.” Yet, when asked for evidence or the name of schools who were allowing this, Abbot had no response. The reel I had seen from James Talarico calls out the suspicious motives and nature of the bill, attacking public schools in the midst of a political campaign pushing vouchers for private schooling. In the video, Talarico also highlights the fact that the idea of litterboxes in school bathrooms is a proven hoax, with no credibility to the claim.

Even though the issues addressed in the bill lacked evidence, and some issues were disproven all together, furry panic took its hold in education and bathroom politics – because that is a thing now. Around the time of Talarico’s video, there were lots of reactions to the proposed bill and its topics being discussed online. The popularity and controversy of the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act made its way off the internet, though, and started making its way into social and political conversations beyond Texas. 

Soon after seeing these short videos which discussed the issue of litterboxes in schools, I was approached by a coworker who claimed the issue had reached Tennessee. Interested in where the conversation would go, I asked her where she had heard this information. As I expected, the information she heard was from a friend, who heard it from another friend, who more than likely heard it from another friend. My coworker explained that a school in Jackson, Tennessee, really did have a litterbox in it! I responded by telling my coworker about the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act which had likely inspired the rumor she had heard. I further explained that in the Texas legislative session, the issue had already been labeled a hoax; despite its legal existence in a proposed bill. She pushed back, telling me that she had seen a photo and knew it was real. The conversation ended here.

At the time, I only knew the information I had seen in Talarico’s short, clipped, video. My claim that it was a hoax was only as strong as her claim that it was in fact not a hoax. So, I got to searching.

Because of the popularity of this topic, there were lots of different news outlets covering the outbreak of the “furry panic.” Scrolling through the plenty of headlines that come up when you search “litterbox in Jackson TN school,” many headlines which mention the falsehood of the claim, I found two links posted by WKRN (a local source) that at least give context to the local rumors. While one link is a video and the other is an article, they both give similar information and credit the litterbox rumors to the same source: a Tennessee Legislature Committee hearing where Sen. Janice Bowling commented, “I’m hearing this in my rural districts where maybe schools are not fully disclosing that they are allowing children who identify as snakes, cats, whatever, they are providing litter boxes.” Sen. Bowling goes as far to call the rumored litterboxes in schools a “growing crisis.”

Similar to the conversations had in the Texas legislative session, Tennessee legislators had no evidence for the claims being made. These senators and representatives who made these claims had no names of schools who have been proved to allow this. The claims themselves had weak foundations, using words like “maybe” to describe whether this is a genuine issue or not.

The overall lack of evidence made me start to question, where did this all even start? Well, the timeline of the hoax itself is somewhat tricky, or at least does not fully add up. The F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, the first instance of furry panic I had seen, was proposed March 13th, 2025, and has been waiting to make it out of the house committee since April of 2025. 

Oddly, the legislative incident in Tennessee occurred in September of 2022, almost three years before the proposal of the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act. Similar claims were made in a Michigan school board meeting as well. This incident occurred on December 20th of a 2021, where a parent claimed children “identified as furries” and were using litterboxes in their school bathrooms; the parent does establish before speaking that this issue was “addressed by a child.” With all of these incidents happening years before the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, it is clear that the claims made in the Texas legislature were not the first instances of this rumor. And, it was not the rumors in Texas that had inspired my coworkers claims, but a recycled rumor straight from Tennessee; well technically from Michigan and Texas too. Basically, neither Abott nor Talarico made this topic an internet or social sensation, it had already been one for quite some time.

When these rumors were circling between states and school counties in 2022, the TODAY show took to addressing these claims. In their report posted in October of 2022, they mention the Michigan school board meeting where furries and litterboxes were brought up as a concern; more specifically they mention the lack of proof presented in the meeting. 

The headline that is visible on screen during the report reads, “cat litter in schools disinformation campaign.” Three years before Texas even got their hands on the rumor, national news sources were labeling the litterbox hoax as a disinformation campaign. I think it is important to note that in TODAY’s 2022 report, they highlight that 20 conservative candidates and elected officials made litterbox claims in 2022. And, that number has only grown since elected officials in Texas repositioned the spotlight on the hoax cycling back into popular media.

The TODAY show clip does accredit the Michigan school board meeting as “the first sign of the rumor.” While this may be true in the case of the rumor being presented in official school meetings, the rumor or hoax itself still had to come from somewhere. The Michigan parent credits the information coming from a child, which is more than probable with childhood imagination and pranks. 

However,  a Joe Rogan podcast clip making the claim of litterboxes in school bathrooms was posted just two months before this school board meeting took place. While Joe Rogan is hard to define politically, his audience can be considered a republican leaning one. While there is no political affiliation defined at the Michigan school board meeting, the pattern follows with all the representatives or officials who engaged with this rumor. 

Interestingly enough, Joe Rogan almost immediately debunked the litterbox claims himself around a month after the original clip was posted. He admitted this in his podcast saying, “It doesn’t seem like there was any proof that they actually put the litter box in there.” In fact, the topic of litter boxes in school bathrooms has an entire Wikipedia page explaining that it is just a hoax; which was originally created in September of 2022.

So, let me round it out a bit. In October of 2021 Joe Rogan made his claim that a school installed a litter box; which he admitted was false about a month later. Two months later in December of 2021, this claim was repeated at a Michigan school board meeting. Between the months of December 2021 to October of 2022, when the ABC report debunking was posted, this claim was repeated 20 times in legislative spaces. One of these incidents being the Tennessee legislative meeting in September of 2022; which happens to be the same month the Wikipedia article labeling the litterbox as a hoax was published. The incident is still being recycled through he-said-she-said stories and online clips when Texas joins the party in March 2025. This hoax continues to stay relevant in the media until my coworker mentions it to me in a conversation, in 2026. 

With so much proof, that there is no proof, you think this whole thing would be over by now and everyone could get on the same page, right? USU folklore department head Lynne McNeill explains that claims, like the litterbox one, that are reported in town settings as true information with a lack of evidence become a sort of urban legend. She describes the process as;  “we t(ell) the story as though it happened in our own hometown. So when it’s fake news it really reads as news about a particular town in a particular place. It’s an urban legend when it’s wildfire traveling by word of mouth.”

So, it is not unlikely you will see this claim again; some other person in some other town will hear whispers of litterboxes in schools, and it will become a sensation again; just like it did with Texas, seemingly three years after the hoax died down.