That's where the rub is. He is, by all accounts, a successful chemist, yet also is a hardcore alcoholic that for some reason, decided to devote his life hanging around and wrangling these exact people. That's... not normal. Plus, there is a ton of "Kage stories" out there, yet don't get a lot of coverage, because of backlash fear.
You're putting the cart ahead of the horses there. It's not that he's a successful chemist who's for some reason decided to devote his life to tardwrangling furries. He's
very old in the fandom. He was something like 24 or 25 when he started getting involved with furries, so he somehow
became a successful chemist
while being an alcoholic furry tardwrangler.
It's not normal, that's right, because he is a rarity among furries. He's not just old,
he's still around as a public figure. Most furries from his generation faded into the background. Some left altogether, but from what I gather the ones that are still alive (substance abuse and mental illness being rife in the fandom as they are) mostly just keep a low profile while still commissioning art and being degenerates within their own circles. That's the big weird thing about Kage.
As for his fuckups... again, the problem is that furries are so fucking extreme right now that simply being into a weird kink or drunkenly hitting on the occasional 17-year-old barely registers. Hell, that last one barely registers among non-furry gays. Thirsting for younger guys is the norm there, not the exception. Meanwhile, "fear of backlash" doesn't really apply in this age of anonymous callout posts. If there was anything even other furries would find serious, it would have come out already. Kage
usually stays out of social media slapfights, so despite his (waning) influence he's at most a minor lolcow at the moment.
On the other hand, expect a lot more millennial furries to hang around the public side of the fandom well into their 60s in the future. Conway's generation mostly got jobs, set up families, and settled down. The current crop? Social media is part of them, their entire social lives are structured around being furries. There will be geriatric furry slapfights on the 2040s equivalent of Twitter.