I see a lot of people here are 'lifestylers' of varying degrees, or else want to get into it. I'm just curious what you do, where this came from and why. Is it something you've always done and it's stuck out of habit? Did you hear about it and think it sounded like something you want to do? Is it a spiritual thing?
I definitely fit the description of a moderate lifestyler. I make animal-like sounds and display some animal-like body language, sometimes I wear a tail and ears. I'm in general more drawn to animal stuff. A lot of these are habits and preferences I've had since I was little. I didn't have very many friends, and I used to read a lot. A good portion of things I read were reference books and encyclopedias about cats. I learned cat body-language, and I think at some point I started displaying it. I have Asperger's so human body-language didn't come naturally to me. At this point the behaviour has kind of stuck, though I have been working on normalizing my body language a bit. While some of the sounds I make are out of habit (a yelp if I get stepped on or surprised) others are just sort of for fun ('snirf' when there's an awkward silence).
When I wear my tail and ears in public, I do it just for fun. It makes me happy, and that's about it. It's like my leather vest and big boots to me.
As I've said in other discussions, I am in no way a spiritual person and that doesn't factor into it at all. I also have a very strong separation between real animals and furry where the fact can affect the fiction, but I do not let the fiction affect my perspective on the fact.