Stinky

How can bad, stinky smells turn into something wonderful smelling? In perfumery we not only use delicate wonderful smelling components, we sometimes use very stinky components too. For example Jasmine is a wonderful smelling flower, it's one of my favorite scents, but when you smell the single components of Jasmine on their own, like Indole, it doesn't smell so wonderful anymore. Pure Indole smells fecal but when it's diluted at 1% or less it becomes flowery like Jasmine or Orange flower.

A friend asked me for Cat Ketone (4-mercapto-4-methyl-2-pentanone), so I ordered it for him and received a bottle with a 1% dilution of Cat Ketone. Cat ketone occurs naturally in Black currant and Sauvignon grapes. When I opened the bottle to sniff, my head went backwards in a shock and the only words I could say were: "holy shit", it was unbelievable overwhelming and stinky, it smelled like cat urine!!!!

I left it in the bottle and quickly screwed the lid back on. But too late, my whole house stank like cat urine, it was unbearable. I opened all the windows and burned incense but the smell stayed. The day after I was drinking some juice of tropical fruits like Mango and guava, I smelled the juice and instantly recognized the smell of Cat Ketone, but strongly diluted. My plan was to take a little bit of the Cat Ketone for my self and give it to my friend, but I changed my mind and gave him the whole bottle.