Civet

Natural civet comes from the perineal gland of the African civet cat, and historically it was scraped from caged animals — a practice now banned in most of the world. Modern 'civet' is synthetic (civetone and related macrocyclic musks). It smells of fecal, animalic, leathery warmth — stronger and more 'fecal' than castoreum. Civet was the secret fixative in almost every classical floral (Joy, N°5 vintage, Shalimar), where it gave compositions 'depth' and 'skin intimacy.' Used at trace levels it's indolic-warm; at high levels it's unmistakably fecal.