If you have luxury fragrances lying around, there are some animals with expensive taste who would love a spritz of them.
Banham Zoo in Norfolk, England recently announced that it was soliciting fragrance donations because the ocelots, the jaguars, and cheetahs simply can’t get enough of the intoxicating scents of perfume and supply is short.
The draw of a good perfume for both domestic cats but also wild cats is well-documented in various research projects. It can be positively enchanting for the big cats.
Chalk it up to the civetone, a natural perfume ingredient that comes from the animal civet (a small nocturnal animal) that labs can manufacture now, according to the Bronx Zoo’s testing.
These big cats at this zoo have an infatuation with “purrrfume,” as this video of the majestic animals shows them cozying up to trees and logs scented with perfume.
But stocks are low and they need more.
“The keepers at Banham have noticed their stocks of old perfumes are running low and are hoping that visitors to the zoo might also want to drop off any old or unwanted scents when they visit,” as the announcement puts it.
While the cats have a favorite scent, they are apparently open to different fragrances.
“Our big cats definitely react positively when scents are used as part of their enrichment program. For some reason Calvin Klein perfume is a huge hit with all big cats but in all honesty, any perfumes work well and we do like to offer them a variety of different smells,” animal manager Mike Woolham said in the announcement.
Consider this if you could spare a dash of cologne.
