The Ultimate Guide to Kink (31 page)

Felines are another often-desired animal species for role players.
Kitty play
might involve role playing as a cat or a kitten, or even wild feline species such as lions, leopards, or tigers. Some are drawn to the loving feline traits of being cuddly, playful, sweet, or sensual, while others are called by the standoffish, aloof, and proper demeanor of some cats. Cats, after all, often exhibit an extreme dichotomy of traits, and this appeals to a number of role-playing possibilities. Kitty play archetypes include the pretty kitty, lost kitten, cranky house tabby, troublemaking alley cat, cowardly lion, and wild bobcat.

Though pony play, puppy play, and kitty play get the most air time in the world of animal role playing, there are many other species to choose from. Farm animals appear often in animal role play pornography, where girls are depicted as cows being milked and gay piggy boys roll around wallowing in the mud. Fans of erotic humiliation might be drawn to worm and bug roles, where a dominant partner can “squish” their partner underfoot or treat them for the length of the scene as worthless and small.

Birds of all shapes are a fantastic inspiration for role playing: think of trained parrots, wild pigeons, elegant swans, or precocious penguins. In the public kinky sex community I’ve played with a human ferret who traveled with its own jingly toys, and it would not be surprising to meet a human rat or mouse. How many of us have enjoyed the aesthetics of scantily clad bunny girls? If you are not drawn to the simple, consider becoming something more exotic—a zebra, monkey, dolphin, snake, or hippopotamus. Even the occasional dinosaur, dragon, or sphinx has been known to make an appearance in bedroom fantasy adventures.

Personality

Once we have an idea of the kind of species we would enjoy being, we can explore our pet personality. Would you rather have your animal persona be close to your daily demeanor or something radically different? For example, if you are easygoing in your day-to-day life, you might enjoy an opposite role, like a defensive Doberman; maybe you want to be more like your average self but in dog form, like a happy-go-lucky Golden Retriever.

Neither is better or worse, but it is important to consider what traits call to you today. You can choose a different personality next time. Do you want your pet personality to be lazy? Feisty and bratty? Do you want to use your pet self as a chance to explore submission or service? Perhaps your darker desires come to the surface and you want a safe framework to explore being an abused pony (literally kicked when they are down), or a feral wolf on the hunt for blood.

If unsure in which direction to take your character’s personality, consider some animal names. Are you Lady? Piglet? Lancelot? Beast? Pinky? Boxer? Lord Eduardo, King of the Goats? Names hold a lot of power. Being called by our pet name gets us out of our day-to-day space and into our role. They also tell us a lot about the personality of the pet and how to interact with them. An ironic combination of species and name can also be hilarious, affecting how we treat both the pet and their handler. Most of us would react differently to a Chihuahua named Pinky than we would to a Pit Bull named Pinky.

INTERACTIONS

Reason for play, species, and personality in hand—now what? Now we get to decide what characters we interact with. Will you be a pet on your own, playing with toys or eating from a bowl? Will a human puppy play with another human puppy, or a group of human puppies, at a kinky sex conference? Perhaps your inner house cat and your partner’s puppy will interact with one another.

Others will want to have their animal self interact with a human character. There is a lot of enjoyment to be had by being one of these humans. Do you want to be a pet “owner,” having pride in your pet, investing in or showing off a top-valued racehorse, or bonding with what is yours? For human pet owners, there is an intimacy of connection that can arise as pet and owner grow into their roles together.

Sometimes a pet “trainer” actually spends more time with a pet than its owner does. Trainers have the capacity to create a regimen, formality, and structure with a human animal as they train it how to behave. You might enjoy being a trainer (or playing with one) if you enjoy dominance and submission, or if the notion of positive or negative reinforcement gets your juices flowing. By pushing or cajoling the creature, trainers help push their animal into being the best animal they can be.

Sometimes a pet just needs to connect with a handler, someone who is a fan of pets and likes interacting with them without being invested as a trainer or owner. These are folks who have fun petting the kitty, playing tug-of-war with the puppy, or riding around on the pony’s back. Being a handler can be a great chance to let go of stress, fulfill our need for a nonhuman pet by having a human one step in, or explore bestiality fantasies.

ACTIVITIES

Many animal role players get flustered about what to do as human animals and their handlers. It’s okay. When you see porn featuring thousand-dollar pony harnesses, hoof boots, and a full farm to be run around in, it can feel as if you’ll never go there without the financial investment. This is not true.

One of the simplest ways to encourage your transformation into an animal role is by changing your physicality into that of your animal of choice. Yes, those hoof boots might make you stand taller and walk upright, but so can a pair of high heels, or just standing taller and prouder. Consider petting your pony’s back to remind her of her posture, or physically straighten her out. Head high, proud! Even if he is a four-legged pony (someone who goes around on hands and knees, sometimes offering ponyback rides for those their frame can safely hold), help your pet keep good posture and his head high. Thus you can create physicality with no cost at all.

Physicality can be encouraged in two-legged pony play (walking on human legs) by binding the arms back with something as simple as a pair of cuffs. For cats and dogs, encourage them to ball their hands in mitts, get a pair of gardening or sports knee pads to let them crawl around for longer on all fours, or find some sort of tail that can move as they crawl or walk about. For worms, what about binding the arms at their sides? What will help them be the pet they want to be?

Come to it with a sense of humor and a willingness to see what evolves, instead of having a picture of the outcome in mind the very first time.

Once you are physically moving like an animal, consider the types of activities your animal enjoys. Horses can be trotted around a room, led on a lead for formal dressage training, or hooked up to a cart for pulling. They might be put on display and examined at a human animal “show,” set up to be “studded,” or brushed down after a sweaty afternoon of activity (a great way to explore unusual sensations). Puppies can also be brushed, but what about feeding them a dish of chili out of a bowl on the floor—it looks a lot like dog food. Cats might be petted by their favorite little girl, or get taken to the vet. This allows for animal role play to be combined with age play (where grown adults pretend to be younger) or medical play (where a fetish for medical tools and wardrobe is engaged).

Start out small. Try exercises like crawling on the ground, eating without your hands, or chasing a laser beam around a room. What does it feel like to curl up under your lover’s legs and let her pet you for a while? Come to it with a sense of humor and a willingness to see what evolves, instead of having a picture of the outcome in mind the very first time.

If you find that the characters everyone plays are enjoyable, consider moving up to more complex wardrobe, props, or activities. A first-time scene is not the best time to invest in the milking equipment and full Swedish country girl costume—save that for after you know everyone is actually into it. Why spend the money, time, or energy on it if you don’t even know whether you and your partner will enjoy animal role playing?

Find inspiration in the animals you mimic. What types of play do they engage in at home in their native environments? How do they notify their humans when they are hungry or need to answer the call of nature? What kinds of noises do they make and how do they move? These are all great places to draw ideas for role playing.

CARE AND FEEDING

When we engage in human animal role playing, the partner who becomes the pet is offering himself, his love, and his trust as a gift. With that level of trust, it is important that you, as the handler of a human pet, keep up your side of the bargain and care for him while you are in role.

Does this mean that handlers need to provide for all the needs of their play partners? No. Before everyone gets into character, it is best to decide who is responsible for bringing what items, props, beverages etc. to the scene. Many pets have a preferred head harness, favorite chew toy, or precious fluffy bunny tail. Use them! They are already attached to those items and it will allow them more chances to be fully in role. Make sure someone remembers food, water, safer-sex supplies, explicitly erotic toys, and anything else that might come in handy during the scene.

During play, also keep in mind what systems of communication you will use. In many forms of kinky sex play, people use a safeword to let others know when they need to check in or stop the scene, but many human animal role players prefer not to use human speech. If you are playing with someone who wants to be able to communicate a safeword or needs to check in while staying in role, consider alternate systems, such as picking up a toy you otherwise would not use or rhythmically stomping a paw or hoof.

Some pets drop so deeply into their role that they can only understand their trainer’s body language and tone once they are fully transformed into their animal self. These human animals may not be able to deliver safewords or warn you that they are tired of using human words—so find out what their language is. When they are tired, do they yawn or try to lie down? When they are hurt, do they buck up and try to get away? This could be mistaken for obstinacy—find out why your pet mews or screams.

Ethics

The issue of ethics also comes up when we are playing with those who drop so deeply into role that they no longer can communicate with us in human language. Just as BDSM has
subspace
, where a bottom goes so deeply into submission that it may be a challenge for them to communicate, this can happen with some animal role players. If this happens to your partner, consider whether you should honor what you agreed to before they went into character or listen to what the animal before you is trying to tell you.

Things can sometimes go wrong. Once, shooting with Playboy television, I was being ridden by starlet Kira Reed while I was a four-legged pony. I had been a pony for some time that day, and my head space had slipped into being that of a horse—I had forgotten how to speak. This would not have been an issue, except that Kira was wearing spurs—she kicked my thighs and I bucked. She thought I was being playful, and so did everyone else on the shoot. She kicked me again, and I bucked again. This went on for some time, my horse self trying to throw her, and Kira digging in deeper. Finally someone saw that I was bleeding from the spurs.

She was mortified. I was slowly brought back to being a human by taking my tack and costume off, bringing me back layer by layer to my human skin. She and I talked about what happened, and we were all fine, but it taught me that if you plan to do anything really physically tough (a horse-breaking scene or a greased pig catch, say), consider working out nonverbal cues as a form of safeword. If the animal comes to a dead stop, for example, it’s a good sign that something is wrong. If they are not fully in animal head space and can talk, try using a partial language system. Many folks use stomping or barking to indicate yes and no—one bark, yes, two barks, no. Other options involve pet versions of head shakes—up and down for yes, side to side for no. Perhaps you will develop a system where someone needing to go to the bathroom will paw at the bathroom door.

Fully character or animal-invested individuals might be fine with playing beyond what you would do with an actual animal, but are you? If you are the handler, trainer, or pet owner, consider what your limits are for playing with individuals who have “become” animals. Perhaps you were delighted to have your sexy kittygirl lick you for hours on end, but if she no longer seems to understand English and is acting like an actual cat, how do you feel about engaging with her sexually? Do you feel it crosses the line into a bestiality fantasy, or is it just good clean fun? It is important to observe these limits during a scene, and discuss your behavior with your partner when they are fully human again.

Training and Correction

But what happens if your pet does something inappropriate? If they are acting a way because it is in alignment with their persona, look at how you might react to an actual animal that had behaved that way. Is it squirt bottle time for the unruly cat, or a swat on the ass with a rolled up newspaper for the naughty puppy? If your pet does something silly—laugh! If he can’t open up the plastic bag because he’s a kitten in mitts (or has socks taped over his hands), help the poor kitty out. Say, “Poor kitty, let me get that for you.” If she’s a happy and jumpy puppy and you are trying to focus on a task, chide her like the bad dog she is.

But if your lover or play partner actually does something that upsets you, pause or stop the role playing. Do not try to work out your anger and frustration by using the scene as an excuse to literally kick your human dog. This applies to the animal role player as well. If you and your partner are having a challenge in your life together, don’t just pee on the rug to get even. Discuss real issues in a human-to-human dialogue.

Once we have explored the fun and the silliness, the sexiness and the sensuality, the fierceness and more of our characters, some of us may be done. There is nothing wrong with trying out a character once, having fun, and moving on. Others want to come back to their personas again and again, setting regular kitty play date nights or creating a cue to indicate when they are in kitty character, such as putting on a collar.