Civet: The Paste in the Cow-Horn Spoon

The huts were dark and airless, and a fire was left smouldering in them: the smoke kept the flies off, and the farmers believed the heat brought on more paste. Cages stood in rows on trestles. Every nine or ten days in the dry season a farmer restrained each civet and scraped the pouch under its tail with a spoon made from cow horn, and the spoon came away loaded with a yellow paste, strong, faecal, ammoniac and floral at once. This was western Ethiopia around the year 2000, and the paste was civet.

The word has been in English for nearly five hundred years and misread for most of them: Shakespeare blamed a cat, and a coffee made by another animal now sells under its name. In perfumery, synthetics now mostly stand in for it. The real thing still turns up on artisan note lists that name it outright, by its country, its age or its form.

A pouch under the tail

In As You Like It, the shepherd Corin says the hands of courtiers are perfumed with civet, and Touchstone answers: "Civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat." He was right about the birth and wrong about the animal.

The animal is the African civet, the largest of its family in Africa and kin to the genets. The paste comes from perineal glands that both sexes carry, larger in the male, between the scrotum and the penis in a male and between the anus and the vulva in a female. In the wild the civet crouches and presses them against things to mark its territory, and what the horn spoon takes is that marking paste.

Seventy civets and the sheriffs of London

Seventeenth-century England especially prized the Abyssinian civet for its smell, and Daniel Defoe, years before Robinson Crusoe, tried to climb out of debt with seventy live ones. Court records from 1693 show that one of his creditors had the sheriffs of London seize the animals in lieu of his debts. The paper that dug the story out, in 1937, was titled "The Civet-Cats of Newington Green".

Ninety per cent from one country

Ethiopia has kept the African civet in captivity for hundreds of years, and legend has the Queen of Sheba giving civet to King Solomon. The animals were trapped wild, in a noose with a bell attached. Around the turn of the century the country supplied about 90 per cent of the world's civet export. By an estimate of the time its farms held about 4,000 civets, most of the farms in the low-lying west, and about 2,000 kilograms of paste a year left the country for perfumery abroad. The spoon was horn, and long ago so was the crate: unrefined civet was shipped in the horns of zebu cattle, yellow when it went in, darkening and hardening with time, and a full horn held about four years of collection.

In the Jimma zone in 2001 and 2002, a field study of fifteen farms found about 20 grams of paste taken from each civet every nine to fifteen days.

By 2009 the trade was under pressure from perfumers' growing use of synthetic fixatives, and it went on all the same: in a 2026 survey in the Sidama Region of southern Ethiopia, 57 per cent of 328 people named musk extraction as a traditional use of the African civet. Most of the civet available today still comes from Ethiopia, where the animal is raised in captivity.

For Areej Le Doré's Nepalese Patchouli, Russian Adam made a co-tincture of black truffles, orris root, wild Siberian deer musk and Ethiopian civet paste and used it as the carrier for the whole perfume, the base every other material is dissolved in. Over it sit lilac, hyacinth and blue lotus, then a rare Nepalese patchouli likened to old agarwood, with orris butter and Russian oakmoss beside it.

A coffee from another civet

The civet behind kopi luwak is a different animal, from another continent. The coffee is made from beans the Asian palm civet has eaten and passed, partly digested, and it comes mainly from the Indonesian islands, where the animal is often treated as a pest.

Areej Le Doré's first Oud Luwak, in 2018, used that coffee: Russian Adam extracted kopi luwak for its opening, and its note list named no civet. Oud Luwak 2, relaunched in 2025, takes its coffee from Aceh, fermented for two months in teak barrels, and infuses vintage Royal Burmese oud with vintage Royal civet. The first Oud Luwak knew the civet only through its coffee; the second has real civet in its heart.

Roasted, velvety coffee opens it over a wild Papua oud, dry and earthy with an almost cola-like richness. The civet-infused Burmese oud gives the heart smoke and a heavy, warm animal weight among spikenard and cistus, and benzoin and smoky cedar take it down.

The word synthetic, in print

Every raw material named on an Areej Le Doré list is genuine. Russian Adam adds a synthetic only where one is needed, and on War and Peace the list says so: the first, in 2019, and War and Peace 2 both print Synthetic Civet in the base. War and Peace 3, in 2025, adds natural vintage civet inside a co-absolute Russian Adam made with vintage deer musk, ambergris and castoreum, and keeps the synthetic civet too, a few words further along the same line.

Amber resin thirty-five million years old opens it, ember-dark, before a vintage Taif rose and Rose Alba with aged Indonesian patchouli and orris root. Musky fur and supple suede rise through the roses, and the civet comes up late with the oakmoss, over Indian oud and amber resin oil.

Lost Tribe is committed to all-natural perfumes, so on its lists, The Hamptons and Prince of Persia among them, the bare word civet means the material. Ensar Oud prints the civet in Blue Kalbar in full, as genuine civet paste.

Thai blue lotus sits buttery at the centre, under frangipani and the pineapple-cedar rays of blue cypress, with kewda adding a golden, honeyed sweetness and mimosa swaying through it. Under them lie Mysore sandalwood from 1992 and two artisanal ouds, and the civet paste sits among them, one of twenty materials.

What becomes of the paste

For perfumery the raw secretion is purified with solvents and often left to mature, and time changes it. El Khaldi's civet absolute, aged thirty years, has lost its harsh animal edge and every trace of faecal notes and turned warm and floral, with a little spice.

In Lost Tribe's Blu v2, a little filtered civet was left at the bottom of the bottle on purpose: a sediment that moves when the bottle moves and vanishes into the perfume when it is shaken.

Frequently asked questions

What is civet in perfume?

Real civet is a yellow paste from a pouch under a civet's tail, near the genitals, and most of what is available today comes from Ethiopia, where the African civet is raised in captivity. For perfumery it is purified with solvents and often left to mature. Synthetic substances now mostly replace it.

Is a civet a cat?

No. The African civet is a viverrid, kin to the genets and linsangs, and the largest of its family in Africa. In Defoe's day civets were thought to be some kind of feline, badger or skunk, and the name civet cat has stuck.

Is kopi luwak the same civet used in perfume?

No. Kopi luwak is coffee made from beans partly digested and passed by the Asian palm civet, a separate species native to South and Southeast Asia, and it is made mainly in Indonesia. The paste in perfume comes from a different animal: most of the civet available today comes from Ethiopia, where the African civet is raised in captivity.

Is real civet still used in perfume?

Yes, though synthetic substances now mostly replace it. Areej Le Doré prints vintage civet and synthetic civet separately on War and Peace 3, and Ensar Oud lists genuine civet paste in Blue Kalbar.