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Online retailer Felissimo has a soft spot for cats, so much so that it’s got a whole Cat Division subsection with feline-inspired products. In the past, we’ve taken a look at the company’s pullovers and lingerie that let you dress like a kitty, but Felissimo’s new hand cream promises to make you smell like cat, too.

Thankfully, Felissimo’s goal isn’t to give customers the rich bouquet of an alley cat that just got caught in the rain or spent an evening digging through a garbage can. Instead, the company is billing its new hand cream as having the scent of a cat’s paw.

The unusual idea seems to have come about organically. During a product brainstorming meeting, one Felissimo Cat Division employee proposed producing hand cream that leaves your skin looking as enticingly soft and squeezable as a cat’s paw. The rest of the cat-loving meeting participants liked the idea, and the discussion eventually flowed into a conversation about the way many cat owners enjoy taking a sniff of their pets’ paws, finding the fragrance to be mysteriously soothing, so the team decided to give their hand cream the same smell.

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Still, it’s not like fragrance supply companies have vats of “cat paw” aroma just sitting around their warehouse. As one part of its research, Felissimo went with the president of Yamamoto Perfumery Co. to a cat café, where the industry veteran sampled the smells of the animal companions on duty that day.

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Felissimo also asked cat-lovers for help through social media, with many tweeting back what they thought their cats’ paws smelled like. Answers given included caramel, crepes, freshly cooked soybeans, and wheat. The most common response of all, though, was popcorn. As such, Felissimo describes its Cat Paw Scent Hand Cream (for Humans) as smelling like popcorn with additional sweet notes.

A 50-gram (1.8-ounce) container of the hand cream sells for 1,131 yen (US$9.50). Preorders can be placed here on Felissimo’s website, with shipping scheduled for mid-August.

Source, images: Felissimo