I like the smell of wood and sawdust. Walking through Home Depot always makes me happy, and I love it when people come through my line at work with craft wood. I also like the smell of the craft foam sheets we sell at work, and the papery, chemical-y smell that comes out when you first open one of the paper decorative boxes we sell. Mmm, Chinese factory air.
Cigars - smoked by others. My dad smoked them, and the smell reminds me of him. (No, I could never endure the suffocation of actually smoking one of those damned things.)
As others have mentioned, road asphalt and roofing tar have an odd attraction, as does light skunk odor.
There’s a certain kind of dreary, cold overcast morning that feels oddly comforting - no, it’s not just me that feels under the weather, even the weather get that way sometimes.
I know exactly what you’re talking about! My cat was short-haired, though. I used to smell the top of her head or the back of her neck. I just loved the smell of her warm, clean fur.
If you don’t know what I mean, the piers and planking of old dock wood was treated with creosote, a kind of thick tar.
Up until I was 5 years old I lived in a company lumber mill town, down on the river. The smell of creosote on a wet dock is like an instant 50 year time machine for me. Evokes memories long forgotten. I wouldn’t even think that I have any memories of such a young age. But one smell and I see and remember.
Creosote, nasty, probably cancer causing shit. Or a one whiff time machine.
I doubt you can find it anymore, but the smell of freshly mimeographed papers. Tthere’s a scene in a popular 80s movie where the instructor passes out a bunch of papers and all of the kids hold them to their noses and take a big sniff. (the name is escaping me right now, it had Phoebe Cates with that famous pool scene?). Lumber (childhood memories, my dad had a construction company), and the slightly oily, cement-y smell of a warehouse or car repair place (more childhood and teenhood memories, I spent a lot of time working on cars and helping boyfriends and my dad work on cars). And one of my jobs, around 15 years ago, part of my duties were to run and completely reorganize and clean two old warehouses (I got to learn to drive a forklift!)
I love the musky scent of my wife’s unwashed (not stinky, just not scoured clean by perfumed soaps) body - and her urine has the same musk. I don’t rush into the bathroom after she has used the toilet, but I enjoy walking past…