When I take my sports bras off after the gym (sweaty) my cat acts like it crack. She will fight me for it (she has indeed scratch me.once before when I try to take it from her)
She'll hug and rub and kick the hell out of it. It's going to ruin it but her excitment is so much that now I just give it to her.
I had a cat who was like that with smelly shoes. The fresher the smell the better. She'd shove her head in them and purr. Strange little things, they are.
I wonder how much the cats reported on in this thread are interested in smelling human worn objects for the out-of-house smells the objects might pick up versus the smell of their human companions on those objects. We don't do this much as humans compared to other animals but smelling can be used to identify an individual, and smelling the smell of an known individual who's a positive relation can be pleasing