Your perfume is not neutral to them

You spray something you like and the room smells pleasant for an hour. The animal on the floor is in a different room from you. Scent settles, and the layer nearest the floor is the strongest and the last to clear. The things worth being careful with are not the obvious ones. Aerosol deodorant and hairspray in a small bathroom with the cat in it. Reed diffusers and plug-ins running all day in a flat with the windows shut. Scented candles in a closed room. Concentrated cleaning products, particularly anything pine-based or with a strong citrus note, used on a floor an animal then walks on and licks off its paws. Essential oils deserve their own line, because they get recommended as the natural option. Undiluted tea tree, eucalyptus, citrus and pine oils are genuinely toxic to cats, who cannot process them the way we do, and a diffuser running in a closed room is a dose over hours rather than a smell. None of this means a scent-free house. It means the window. Air the room after you spray, do not run a diffuser in a space the animal cannot leave, keep the litter tray away from anything perfumed, and rinse a floor cleaner off rather than letting it dry where paws go. A cat that starts avoiding a room it used to sleep in has told you something. It is usually worth listening before assuming it is being odd.