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At least an animal
Part of a conversation with Cube about identity and insanity.
...I don't have a character, much less one for each species. So I describe the identification as a set of affiliations, implying some degree of loyalty to humanity's present understanding of the two species. That understanding includes the literature tied to the animals (though tied very loosely, in the case of the fisher).
So less a pure furry and more one interested in furry (historical and present) as a lens for understanding humanity?
Neither. Not the former because if a pure furry exists, I don't know what it is. Not the latter, because understanding humanity is a side concern. I'm a furry in order to ensure that I'm at least an animal. I mean to imply that the development of humanity has made the majority of its members something less. Purposes, appearances, activities, perspectives are all less than animal (they go into, they compose what is animal), but human beings are reduced to being, in a vital sense -- that is, reduced to embodying or living -- such things as purposes, appearances, activities, perspectives...
At present humanity is something less than animal. Once I can figure out, to my satisfaction (or rather completion) how I am an animal, maybe then I can try to envision humanity as a higher form of life.
But to get back to the previous point, my understanding of what is fox-like or fisher-like will be human understandings thereof, my capacity for understanding them being a human one. Even if, as I argue (and once argued for draconity), what is fox-like and what is fisher-like cannot be reduced to a subset of what is human.
...Disconnected from a purposeful life by the structures humankind has built for itself. Tricky to undo...
A later part of the conversation.
...I think that more insight in this problem [of boundless greed] can be found in the idea of the fox. There's the insight that hit me with so much force when I first read the Ysengrimus. Reynard isn't any less greedy than Ysengrimus, but his is, in short, a different (and better) form that greed can take. He makes use of cleverness rather than strength, and his ability is what can redirect the raw drive of an Ysengrimus. Power, or the need for power, can't be repressed (that only replaces power with power), nor can it be reasoned with, but it can be outwitted.
All of these magical or divine creatures humanity has described provide ways of coming to terms with what is limitless in a person, whether it be power, suffering, love, patience, or any of the other things that have been expressed at various points in history... any one of which has the capacity to completely reshape human society. The vulpine answer is, in short, that divinity is cleverness. The application of this idea, in my case, is that whatever anger, pettiness, insecurity, delusion, vanity, hopelessness, and resignation might exist in me (and there's much at times), they can all be outwitted. (Again, for emphasis... not controlled, and not reasoned with, but outwitted.)
The downside to this approach is that, like Reynard, I have no final victories over my failings... hunger will never be more than a day away, and Ysengrimus or his kin (that is, what they represent) will always reappear to test my cleverness again. The fox is not the form of one who most values rest, comfort, or endings. But it works.
I hope there's something in there you can use.
Re: Animals
"But first, they must catch you. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."
Perhaps that, too, is an anthropomorphization, but it's an unfamiliar one. For solutions, in general, one would have to be careful to see the animals' solutions, and not our filtered versions of them.
As far as power, specifically, is concerned: apex predators would probably not represent a solution to power, but rather an acceptance, glorification or manifestation thereof. They would not have the indirect strength you mention, but rather the direct strength.
Some also argue that apex predators have to be careful with their power: a lion who carelessly claws at everything will end up hurting himself (and others), for instance. So, the argument goes, that non-predators given weapons can actually be more dangerous because they might use them to the point of destruction.
Re: Animals
Actually, no, I don't think that's true. The purpose at hand is to somehow use animals in the development of my own identity, so removing myself from the process of understanding myself, removing all subjectivity, defeats the point. I say this not to disparage objectivity, but to criticize the idea of taking human beings out of the picture: refusing to anthropomorphize guarantees objectivity at the cost of the emptiness of behaviorism. On the opposite side, accepting anthropomorphization does not guarantee arbitrary understandings of animals, because these understandings must always be reconciled with the real animals.
Some also argue that apex predators have to be careful with their power...
Good point, but the relationship to power is still different in nature from that of any animal lower on the food chain.