The Scent Thing
By Silver and Fawn
The "Sometimes An Angel Dragon is a Gryphon: The Intersection of Identities in Alterhumanity" Panel at the Centarus Festival gave us Thoughts, and we ended up connecting some stuff after ruminating on it for a bit.
That stuff being our behavior around scent and how it interacts with our shared feline identity and our personal identities.
The shared feline identity is, for reference, being feline transspecies as in that we want to make our physical body look more feline plus what we call being 'Culturally Cats' [LINK]. Our gender transition that we agreed on involves transitioning to look 'more feline' to give us all the least amount of dysphoria- both gender and species.
Not all of us *are* directly cats, but the majority of our positive socialization for a good chunk of our lives growing up was by cats as noted in the linked essay- and that left its mark. Cat behavior is natural to us the way human behavior isn't. Some of us are more strongly cat than others, but this still carries over.
It may be more accurate to say that the *body* is cat transspecies and culturally feline- that our neurology is wired feline-as-default to some degree and we present ourselves with a feline tilt to me most comfortable.
So anyways, the Scent Thing.
We have always been very sensitive to scents. Like all of our sensory issues, Bad Scents are nearly unbearable, and Good Scents are very stimmy. What counts as one or the other may not be what other folks consider good or bad scents.
Its only recently that our behaviors around this we have connected to our nonhuman identities- both the feline one and our separate personal identities.
For the base of it, catbrain feels very strongly that things that smell like us are safe things, and things that don't smell like us are not safe- and has done this for a very long time.
This urge to mark things as Ours to make things 'safe' has been present since early childhood and does extend beyond scent.
We recall in elementary school when we salvaged lost pencils off the floor, the host at the time was wary of where those pencils had been, but instead of washing the pencils their first instinct was to get spit all over them first *then* wash them- to mark them with essence of us so they were tagged 'safe' to the catbrain and could then be handled so they could be cleaned properly.
Absolutely batshit terrible child logic about how illness works, but still carries the same thread of 'make it Mine so its Safe' territory marking that we retain in more functional and restrained contexts today (such as decorating a space with Our colors, washing already washed clothes in Our soaps, a little bit of harmless temporary tagging with chalk or sticky notes in more public spaces, etc).
For examples of how some of us handle the scent part of this marking urge now -to stay on topic- two of us will elaborate on our personal experience.
Silver:
So I am a dragon, and dragons are possessive over territory and stuff like a cat is. Mentally, I divide the world into Mine and Not Mine. Territory instincts x2 combo!
As dragons do not fear so many bigger predators, my response to intrusions on things I consider Mine is usually aggression instead of wariness/fear because the dragonbrain overrides the catbrain in this respect. This extends to scent.
This means getting irrationally mad when someone gets their scent/their house's scent on us (even if we are very fond of that person). I then have to remark Over that scent to get it off and stop being so frustrated. I will actively avoid doing things that will get these scents on me because it can lead me to be short with people I quite like.
If I do end up getting other people's scent on me, I will insist on us changing out of clothes immediately when we get home, and take a shower to strip any excess scent off if necessary.
My urge for people I am fond of is to make them smell like me, I want them in the same soaps, the same clothes, the same house-scent. They are Mine to protect and my scent is a symbol of that protection.
Of course, I curb this urge, but I definitely will recommend soaps and other products to people I am fond of in part because of this.
On the flip side, if people I HATE smell like me, It feels like an incursion, even if it isnt. I dont want people I dont like using the same soap and deodorant brands as me. Those are MY scents! Again, I dont make it other people's problem, but the urge is still there to snarl at them and make them wear something else- something that smells bad to match my dislike. Thats not my clowder! Thats not my hoard! How dare you!
I don't, but I want to.
This territory scent aggression is strong for me, and I realize now that its not just autism sensory distress trending slowly towards a meltdown- its two nonhuman identities overlapping with the sensory issues.
Fawn:
For me, I'm a Leafeon-Espeon hybrid, which the important information for the purposes of this writeup is that i'm a medium-sized feline that photosynthesizes.
This means I get a x2 of cat instincts in relation to scent- so unlike Silver, mine are less territory aggression and more aversion/avoidance/waryness of Bad Scents.
I am no apex predator- I am not on the bottom of the food chain, but I am not at the top either.
Double catbrain is not mad when I smell scent-not-mine, instead I am scared and uncomfortable. Unbalanced.
I do much the same things (remarking to get scents off us/our belongings), but the emotion behind it is different.
I have a specific perfume to spray on us to cover up the scents of other people and places that I only use when rescenting.
If we like someone, I want them to smell like us, and I want people I hate to NOT smell like us- and I will make us smell different to fix that sometimes.
Its a mark of great trust if I share soaps or do your laundry with mine- it means im claiming you as someone who is on the same level as us-the-system in terms of affection and trust. Silver might share more freely and I respect that and their judgement, but I am less so personally.