Dwarf fortress gods are weird. They don't seem to respond to prayer and don't require sacrifice or any of the traditional things gods seem to appreciate. But they really, really value statues. Sure, you can wander through the halls and manually geld every priest (or impulse or spoon or whatever silly title the god's priests have taken) who crosses your path, make off with the reliquaries (if there were such things), and wash off the blood in the presumably-holy water, but Plump Helmet Jesus help you if you commit the irredeemable sin of temporarily displacing a blob of rock that Ubo Crossedstreams hammered into what looks sorta like an elephant. You kinda have to hold your a head a little to the side when you look at it, but it's really an elephant!
Since they're gods, it of course doesn't matter what the statue represents or what it's made out of, even if it has nothing to do with their spheres. If it's a sculpted image captured by hammering or chiseling in a permanent medium, and if it is erected in an arbitrarily-defined rectangle of space dedicated to that god, then that god will become CAPSLOCK PISSED if that statue ever gets knocked over. The gods are like, "hey we all really appreciate art, you know, and that guy worked hard on that electrum statue of two fox-women who are kneeling beside the horse and making lascivious gestures. He put a lot of feeling and emotion into it. Or he wanted to make money--either way, it's an important artistic expression. Thou shalt not tip it over on pain of lycanthropy or therianthropy or whatever the hell this curse is called. You'll turn into a ravenous red panda at the full moon if you mess with my statue, 'stand?"
I imagine the first werebeasts in a world come from drunken priests trying and failing to set up new statues. Here's two or three dorks stumbling over each other as they chain-and-tackle up that chrystobalite statue of a grid bug some asshole left on their doorstep. "Well, it's here, so we'd better get it set up. Snodgras, if you drop that rope, the Lord Steel-Belted Radials of Pantywasting as my witness I swear I'll--" and before he finishes someone vomits, Snodgras slips in it and suddenly it's all Night of the Werellama or Wereopossum or Werepeachfacedlovebird, depending on how spiteful your god's RNG is feeling that moment.