Dudes. You must not be doing it right. If you hold out a pointy finger at cat nose-height chances are about 88% that the cat will come "touch noses" with your finger. Even stranger cats will come to the pointy finger. It's a thing.
Herbs are wonderful. I have a pot of golden sage I need to divide; it's five separate plants, I noticed today, and I swear it was only one when I bought it. I have the French and English lavender sharing a planter, and pineapple sage, silver-edged lemon thyme and red creeping thyme in another--but what you smell first is the curry. It's gorgeous too, all feathery silver-grey. My strawberry pot is like Calli's, with chives growing out the top but oregano poufing out everywhere else. Except my chives have already bolted and dropped their flowers. And there's the planter full of patchouli. I didn't know patchouli was a single plant! I thought it was a blend of several essential scents, but this is more "patchouli" than any perfume or incense I've ever smelled--and it smells better than products made with the scent. And then there's the lemongrass, the lemon verbena, and the English and the tiny grey-leaved wooly thyme. I'm missing basil this year, though. I don't know how that happened.
Oh, I forgot to mention the bigass tub of rosemary. It's still greening up after bronzing and then going yellow in the spring. It's got tons of new leaves, though, plus lots of new growth on the tips. I've got a huge ziploc full of dried leaves from last year's clippings. We use it a lot.