A Chocolate Cat

[Seajewel]

Honeyed cacao, toasted amber, caramelized musk, and sweet 10-year aged vetiver.

[Lycanthrope]

Super desserty and syrupy-liquor sweet in the bottle.  It definitely has a bit of a claw to it initially!  On my skin, it goes towards smoky notes real fast, the toasted/caramel to the forefront, but in the scorched sugar way.  There is cocoa and it's a bittersweet dark cocoa note.  I do like the vetiver adding a sort of ... rooty dustiness to the whole feel, whereas the amber and musk give it a prowly tone.  It's kind of like... a cocoa-dappled and incense bathed Bastet?  It really smells like huffing a box of Hershey's Cocoa, with like, honeyed nuts or the idea of them in the background as it dries down which is pretty fascinating.  

[Casablanca]

"Venerable honeyed cacao." At least, that was my first thought when Chocolate Cat was newly applied on my skin: like, a dry, mature scent that's nevertheless mostly honey and cocoa. The aged vetiver seems to age the whole scent to me, somehow: to bring it up a few decades into some dignity and a dry wit cultivated from life lessons.

 

It's an intriguing effect, and I keep huffing my wrist to explore it more. The whole scent is suffused with a toasted, caramel tone that only seems to add to the sense of maturity and life-seasoning. In another scent, it could be playful or sexy... but I think this vetiver is taking the other notes along a different road. Vetiver sometimes turns dank on my shelf if I ignore it instead of airing it periodically, and that might happen here, but it's dry and smoky for now. I'm happy to say the musk is softer than I expected.

 

Dry, toasted, and honeyed cocoa steeped and aged in dark vetiver. I like.

[ND¢]

A dry, almost gritty cocoa opens only to be borne up by the smoothly blended other elements of this. The smoky vetiver, the toasted overtone... Yum. 

[Missanneshirleyofgg]

This is really lovely. The cocoa in this is giving me Tezcatlipoca vibes. Its so dry and warm. Also, the vetiver is a deep rich one. My only experience with good vetiver blends that didnt go BOOM on me is the Gingerbread, vetiver and black currant trio and Two Sheep. Both of those have such nice vetivers and this one is similar. I amp the heck out of honey and am not having this issue. Do feel like there is some wood here, as there is an edge (this could also be the toasted note) to this bland that on me keeps it from being overtly gourmand.

 

Really loving it. Again, this is not overtly foodie on me, but I hoard foodies. Thinking if you are a big fan of gourmands this will not be overpoweringly sweet, but if you primarily like resinous blends, you may indeed find this gourmand. I would love to have this in my collection with Tezcatlipoca. 

 

 

[starbrow]

I was VERY excited to smell A Chocolate Cat and grabbed a decant. Were there some scary notes listed? Absolutely! But I started hearing amazing things about it, and my hopes lifted.

 

The honeyed chocolate component is powerful and punchy. What this translates to for me is a bright, almost floral-sweet tang of honey through a sea of gooey semi-sweet chocolate. The toastedness of the amber almost reads as hazelnut to me, and I do get a drizzle of caramel too, like those brownies that have caramel in them.

 

What breaks my heart is that this gorgeous ten-year-aged vetiver is in THIS scent. Because it is reading as my death combo: dirty chocolate. Chocolate that has rolled around in the dirt. Not just a chocolate bar either, but gooey melted chocolate that now has a layer of dirt encrusted onto it that can never be separated from it. Dirty musky chocolate is just a combo I don't enjoy, and that is exactly what is here.

 

The vetiver is indeed the warm, grassy-dirty vetiver from Two Sheep and Two Goats kind of fame. I want to see it in more blends, because it is absolutely gorgeous. But oh, it just doesn't work for me in this one. 

 

Feedback from others when I wore it was that it is a very "strong" chocolate. That's that punchiness I was talking about earlier. It's not a milky-sweet one like Bliss, with a big throw. It's a big-old HIT of dirty, musky chocolate that goes even more caramel on my skin the longer it dries down. Unfortunately, it's not an upgrade for me, but for those who enjoy scents like Jólabókaflóðið, Haul on the Bowline, Night, and other chocolate/caramel/earthy blends, this might be your jam!

[doomsday_disco]

On application, I mostly get the honeyed cacao and a chewy vetiver. The cacao in this is a bitter type of chocolate (the honey isn't adding much sweetness at the moment), and the vetiver in this is very tame. I thought, from the vial sniff, that it might be the same one from Two Sheep and Two Goats. Now I'm not so sure once applied, since that one was more grassy, so I can't say for sure without deathmatching the two scents -- but I can say it isn't smoky and doesn't go BBQ on me like some vetiver notes do. The toasted part of the amber kind of makes me think of toasted hazelnut, like in O the Joy of My Spirit! The caramelized musk note ends up gaining strength after a few minutes. It's not a red, brown, or black musk, but I'm not able to identify which type it is. I can only quote Wilfred Mott and say that it's cleaner than I thought it would be.   It goes from cacao and vetiver to toasty musk, and then the honey becomes more prominent over time and makes it a honeyed musk and toasted amber with a dab of cacao. Curiously enough, the vetiver, although prominent in the beginning, didn't end up being a main player on me throughout wear.

 

At the moment, I don't feel like I need a bottle, but I'm going to let this rest for a few weeks and retest it again to be sure. I like that the vetiver in this one is tame, but I kind of wish that I got less musk and more cacao. In any case, I'll be hanging onto my decant!

Edited January 31, 2022 by doomsday_disco

[Lucchesa]

A Chocolate Cat is very sweet on me, with honeyed cacao as its most prominent component.  It sits at the cusp between gourmand and dark resins, or as if traditional perfume notes have been gourmandized -- toasted amber, carmelized musk.  This is a territory I quite like, and the honey gives this great staying power on me.  The one disappointment here is the vetiver, which is too well-behaved for my liking.  I think this may age into a 2S&2G type drydown where the sweet vetiver dominates, but for now it's overpowered by the honey. 

 

8/13 update: My first slonk of A Chocolate Cat flew out of my hands and I couldn't figure out where it had gone until I found it resting upside down in the folds of my scarf.  My scarf still smells amazing.  Fortunately, @Teamama gifted me another one, which is not nearly so sweet - the vetiver is indeed coming into its own, the honey is more flavoring than sweetness.  This is aging beautifully. 

Edited August 13, 2022 by Lucchesa

[melandie]

A sweet, chocolatey, very cozy blend. It calls up images of curled up by a fire with a sleek dark brown cat, eating chocolates and reading a favourite novel. The vetiver here is very well behaved. To me, the notes blend so well together they're hard to pick out individually, except the sweetened, slightly dusty cacao. Really strong throw and longevity too! Definitely another Yule win for me.

[zankoku_zen]

This smells like chocolate amber. Which is foodie and ambery. If you wanted a basically perfume version of chocolate, here you go. Medium throw and wear length.

[MamaMoth]

comes on initially with huge blast of bittersweet cocoa.  it's like... 90% dark cocoa and 10% sweet chocolate, but never milk chocolate for which i am glad.  ever so slightly honeyed, but honey is not a heavy hitter here and is really only present in the opening. the vetiver IS a heavy hitter, and it's gorgeous.  dry-grassy and smoky, it seems to be amplifying both the enjoyable bitterness and the sweetness of the blend.

as it dries, a sort of fuzzy amber musk emerges.  the cocoa does that thing it sometimes does on my skin which i love, where it's less OMGCHOCOLATE and more just a rich brown earthiness. 

fully dried and settled, i get almost no cocoa at all, which is wild.  it's a warm fuzzy musky amber/vetiver, soft and earthy and  smoky.  there's just enough sweetness to temper the smoky bitterness.

tried this on a whim, but i'm really enjoying it and will more than likely snatch a bottle before the yules come down.

[dancingchair]

This cat is made of very dark chocolate! There is a bit of honey in this, but it is not that sweet to my nose. The vetiver pairs wonderfully with the chocolate, making it a bit grassy and amplifying the bitterness. I love the lab's chocolate notes and I'm amazed that this one truly smells like dark chocolate.

 

I'm not always in the mood for sweet perfumes and this is great for those moments.

[wolf_truffles]

It's mostly amber and vetiver on me! A faint whiff of something sweet and chewy but this is actually a pretty bitter. I don't like it as is but I think this would be a good thing to mix with another perfume you think is a bit too sweet