I don't think it is weird at all, I think it's adorable. This artist should be proud of their skills. I'm a non-furry.
I may be able to offer something on why some people react so negatively to furries, though. I grew up in a very religious environment, where there was a doctrine about how mixing human and animals is an abomination (FYI religious people commonly believe humans are not animals), and, dirty wicked evil sin-monsters and all that stuff. And there is really nothing unique about the place I crew up, there are thousands of 'religious communities' *cough*cults*cough* like that all over the world. So, you have the people who are brainwashed to hate things of this image's kind from the start, and you have the people in their periphery, who are influenced by those people, like spill-over from religion to humanity. I'm sure this theory doen't account for ALL anti-furries, but I'll bet it is a principle cause of a lot of it.