in reply to Creating SELECT-like look-up tables as hashes

No need to check for existence, Perl has autovivification:
push @{ $lookup_fur_and_legs{$key} }, $ref;

It will create the new array ref if needed.

Update:Also, as $id is not used, you can change the loop to

for my $ref (values %lookup_id) {
لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ