What's your cat's favourite perfume?
written by Dr. Laxmi Iyer

Have you guessed it as yet or are you totally in the dark about odours? Your cat's favourite perfume is most likely to be catnip or catmint. When it comes to smell, we humans are still in the stone age time scale as compared to our feline and canine friends. The truth is that though you and your cat are very close to one another, when it comes to perfumes, you are universes apart.

In the radio waves of the smell world, your cat can probably tune into all the frequencies - short wave, long wave, microwave, infrared... the entire spectrum.

Many fascinating odour molecules for which we do not have the nose to imagine come in the infra-red spectrum. Your cat can smell all that stuff too!

To say that your cat's sense of smell is simply fantastic! Is an understatement. In your cat's world smells have a distinct identity. Every fragrance and odour has a distinctly recognizable name, face and signature tune.

Common beliefs credit a cat's sense of smell to being operational and significant at mating times and as identity sign posts. That probably is a short sighted and poorly understood view point.

Stand in awe. Respect your cat's sense of smell. Your cat lives in a very scented world. From the minutest whiff in the breeze to the strongest perfume that you wear, to your friends a mile away planning to visit you - your cat can see it all.

And remember, your cats wear perfumes all over their body - almost from head to foot. From scent glands on either side of their forehead, chin, lips, paws and the side of the tail, they walk up to you in their fur coats all jazzed up with perfume.

And you know how often they spread some of their natural perfume on your body with their greeting rituals.

The healthy human nose can detect about 10 000 odours. Cats are supposed to have a sensitivity that is 1000 times more powerful. You can imagine how mind boggling it must be to live in your cat's world.

The olfactory region or the area of smell in your cat's nose is 5 times more than in yours. In humans it is 5cm2 while in cats it is 25cm2.

Remember, your cat has patches of the smell sense tissue located in the roof of the mouth too. It is called the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson's organ. It is especially useful to help your cats sniff out pheromones.

One thing however is clear, if you or your pets get really low in vitamin A, the sense of smell is going to do down to near zero levels. That means your smell sense simply gets dysfunctional. Vitamin A plays a very useful role in deciding how well you and your pets can smell. There have been many observations which draw a correlation between pigmentation on the olfactory epithelium and how sensitive a species is to smell. The more the pigmentation, the higher the sense of smell.

A Quick and Simple Cat Sniff Test Rub different compounds with strong odours on your cat's favourite toys. Watch which toys your cats prefer to play with. That's a quick way to figure out which fragrances your cats find acceptable.

The tough part about odours is that scientists still haven't got it figured out.

Aeons ago, the moths and other insects already had all the sense molecules and chemistry navigation maps worked out clearly over hundreds of miles.

Unlike the light waves, there's no specific quantifiable linearity. Attempts were made to club all odours into 7 primary odours but the theory vapourised with some jay walking scents breaking the rules. So have a lot of solid sounding theories.

Aeons ago, the moths and other insects already had all the sense molecules and chemistry navigation maps worked out clearly over hundreds of miles.

Scientists are still busy sniffing the air...getting cued and clued onto smells in a very broad way.

Interestingly, many strong links have been found associated with the sense of smell and memory. And even emotions too!

Does this mean that the whiff of a fragrance can actually make you sad or happy, calm or nervous depending on your previous associated memory?

Well, probably yes, but fortunately or unfortunately we and our pets have flexible, plastic brains, where learning is a full time job. The memory banks are constantly being upgraded. There's a jumbled mix of learning and relearning happening all the time.

6 Ways to make your home smell friendly for your cat