“It seems like everyone wants to smell like their cat. That’s not an innuendo,” says fragrance influencer Cammy in a recent video reviewing Odette’s Pas De Chat, a perfume containing a cat fur note which she describes as akin to a cashmere sweater that’s been caught in the rain. Like any healthily obsessed pet owner, I absolutely love the way my cats smell. I’m definitely not the only one. There’s even a term for burying your face in your feline’s fur: cat huffing. Whether it’s wanting to smell like a horse girl, scents named after animals or the explosion in popularity of animalic notes in perfumery, we seem to be enchanted by the idea of smelling like our four legged friends.

“I’m a cat lady through and through,” Odette Fontaine, creator of Pas De Chat confesses, “I had to include something feline in my first formula.” Fontaine describes the perfume as “a warm, skin-like, ambery gourmand with a soft focus animalic musk element that grounds it.” One Fragrantica reviewer, however, puts it more simply: what “a beloved white Persian cat that belongs to Elizabeth Taylor would smell like”. “I just so happen to be a white Persian cat owner myself coincidentally, so this review is spot on,” Fontaine says.

Kitten Fur and Puppy’s Breath by Demeter are two other animalistic perfumes that have recently gone viral, with some even moved to tears by the scents. “It’s said that cat lovers like the way their cats smell because their brains have been invaded by toxoplasmosis,” jokes one review of Kitten Fur, alluding to the old wives tale of pet-carried parasites that rot owners’ brains into being so cat crazy. “We have emotional relationships with our pets that are far beyond what our grandparents would have even imagined,” Mark Crames, the nose behind Kitten Fur and Puppy’s Breath and the Chief Perfumer and CEO of Demeter, tells me, “Smells trigger those feelings and memories in a very visceral way.”

In an essay on the human/animal relationship “Why Look At Animals?”, art critic John Berger posited that animals are an antidote to the human condition of loneliness, offering us a silent companionship that stems back throughout human history and holding an understanding that transcends human comprehension. We tend to take care of our pets better than most of us care for ourselves, lavishing them with attention and love. The relationship with a pet is one of unconditional love, vulnerability, and an unspeakable bond. When you’ve lived with and loved animals in your life, it makes perfect sense that a sniff of their fur – or something close to it – could be deeply evocative.

If you’re interested in emulating the qualities of other animals, Zoologist has probably got you covered, with over 40 perfumes inspired by a fascination with their habitats, looks and behaviours. The package that arrives at my door is like some sort of fantastical children’s book series, containing scent bottles labelled with everything from the more quotidian rabbit, bat and cow through to far flung king cobra, penguin and squid. The most infamous, Tyrannosaurus Rex, is rumoured to smell like burnt blood and barbeque. It’s definitely an intense scent with super smokey herbal aromatics and spicy forest notes, calling to mind singed primaeval landscapes and prehistoric beasts.

Moth is another popular Zoologist scent. With a mothball note that is prominent but not unpleasant mingling with dusty florals and powdery vintage almost disinfectant smell, this takes me on a journey into a dimly lit oak-panelled office with flowers of dried out flowers, dusty books piled high, and mildewy cardboard boxes stacked under heavily draped velvet curtains. Squid is inky, incensey, salty and the perfume is bright blue. Always the cliché, I love Bee, a mouthwatering honey fragrance that marries syrupy sweetness with a waxy musky warmth.

Using raw animal materials in perfume dates back to Ancient Egypt, although today the ingredients are mostly all created synthetically for ethical reasons. Musk was originally harvested from the glands of musk deer. Ambergris, now found as synthetic Ambroxan, has the crazy lore of being a beautifully fragrant ball of indigestible octopus beaks pooped out by a sperm whale and washed ashore. Civet, extracted from the anal glands of the poor namesake creator, was commonly found in popular vintage perfumes such as Chanel No.5 and Shalimar. Castoreum, another popular animalic, was originally harvested from the anal glands of Castoreum beavers.

I am mildly disappointed when Kitten Fur is a musky, talcum powdery scent with soapy sweetness that smells basically nothing like my cats. I’m pretty sure that Pas De Chat wouldn’t fit the bill either. Far from a freshly spawned kitten or pampered house cat, my cats are constantly roaming the streets of London, have never been bathed in their lives, and have brought in a live pigeon more than once. Maybe I need something a bit more feral.

There is an enticing duality of having domesticated animals: from time to time, we get glimpses of the wild predator still lurking under the surface. This duality of lurking danger and wildness can be found in the notes of Marlou fragrances, the infamously carnal French perfume brand. “The primal aspect of our sense of smell is often discussed – this sense that connects us to an ancestral animality, awakening vivid, sudden emotions that feel like the emergence of an unconscious. I believe animalic notes and body odours immerse us deeply in this experience,” artistic director Briac Frocrain tells me. 

“That smells like cat piss,” a friend told me after I introduced them to my favourite Marlou scent, Ambilux, for a previous column. It turns out that I had found my feral cat perfume a while ago. Ambilux is heavy on hyraceum, a note that comes from the spot where the African hyrax, a little rotund rodent, urinates in the same spot for centuries. “I’ve received surprising feedback several times from pet owners who use Marlou perfumes,” Frocrain says. “Some have told me that Carnicure and Ambilux seem to influence their pets’ behaviour, notably attracting them.” Musky, civety Carnicure is name dropped in an r/fragrance forum a few times, and described by one keyboard poet as a “fuckable fur coat”.

“It’s true that some clients use perfumes to immerse themselves in a role or adopt a symbolic posture. Perhaps, in some way, these perfumes allow them to appropriate a part of animality, creating a connection that brings them closer to animals and to a more instinctive side of themselves,” says Frocrain. On my skin, Ambilux’s intense animalic opening settles into a deeply comforting smell of faintly floral musky incense, sweet summer sweat and warm intimate amber that I wear almost daily. I guess when you love something so much, even the smell of their piss can be sweet.