Can Your Candle Coexist With Your Cat? A Founder's Honest Take on Pet-Safe Home Fragrance

Let me set the scene. It is 7:43 a.m. in Dubai. The kettle is on, the studio is calling, and somewhere in the apartment a cat named Barfi is staring at me with the moral authority of a Supreme Court judge because his breakfast is two minutes late. There are nine others behind him. Yes, ten. Six cats, four dogs, one extremely outnumbered human running a fragrance brand. This is the daily backdrop against which I think about scent — not in a serene, soft-focus, linen-draped sort of way, but in a "please do not let any of you eat the reed diffuser today" sort of way.

If you live with animals, you already know: a home is never just yours. It is theirs first. They simply allow you to pay the rent. So when people ask me, as a fragrance founder and a deeply outnumbered pet owner, whether scenting a home is even compatible with having cats curled on the sofa and dogs snoring at your feet, my answer is yes — but with caveats, and with a few things I wish someone had told me earlier.

The thing nobody mentions about cats

Cats are not small dogs. I cannot say this loudly enough, partly because I currently have six of them as my witnesses, and Ginger in particular has opinions. Their livers are missing a specific enzyme — glucuronyl transferase, if you want to impress someone at brunch — which means they cannot efficiently process certain compounds that dogs and humans handle without a second thought. This is why some essential oils that smell heavenly to us are genuinely risky for cats.

The usual suspects include tea tree, eucalyptus, peppermint, pine, wintergreen, cinnamon, citrus oils, and ylang-ylang. None of these are dramatic villains. They are simply not things you want diffusing around an animal whose biology was not designed to break them down.

Dogs are more forgiving, but not invincible — Eva, Mello, Bonnie, and Uma have all, at some point in their lives, tried to taste-test something they should not have, which tells you everything about how seriously a dog takes the concept of "harmful." Birds, on the other hand, are the most fragile residents in any scented home — their respiratory systems are so sensitive that even a non-stick pan on the stove is a hazard, let alone an aggressive plug-in.

The candle conversation we should be having

Here is a slightly uncomfortable truth about the candle industry: most mass-market candles are made from paraffin, which is a petroleum byproduct, and many wicks have historically contained metal cores that are not exactly what you want vaporising into your living room. When the candle burns, so does everything in it. Your pets are breathing the same air, often closer to the floor where heavier particles settle, and they breathe faster than you do.

This is not a reason to give up candles. It is a reason to read labels with the same seriousness you read your pet food labels — which, if you are anything like me, is with a magnifying glass and mild suspicion. Look for soy, coconut, or rapeseed wax. Look for cotton or wood wicks. Look for brands that disclose their fragrance components rather than hiding behind the word "parfum," which legally means "we'd rather not say."

I will spare you the sales pitch about how Innara approaches this. You're here for advice, not a brochure.

The reed diffuser question

Reed diffusers are, in many ways, the gentlest option for a multi-pet household. Nothing is burning, nothing is being ultrasonically vaporised into a fine mist, and the scent throw is passive — it lives or dies based on airflow. The catch is the carrier liquid. Older formulations used DPG (dipropylene glycol) or other solvents that you do not want your dog accidentally lapping up off the floor when the bottle inevitably tips over. Modern, better-made diffusers use plant-based carriers, and that is the standard worth seeking out.

Place them where curious noses, tails, and elbows cannot reach. A diffuser at coffee-table height in a house with four dogs is not a fragrance product. It is a countdown.

Ultrasonic diffusers: the one I am cautious about

If there is one category I would gently steer pet owners away from, it is the ultrasonic essential oil diffuser. Here is the issue. These machines disperse actual oil molecules into the air in a fine mist. Those molecules land on fur. They get groomed off. They get ingested. With cats in particular, this is the most direct route to the problems described above. If you love your diffuser, run it in a room your animals do not access, with the door closed and good ventilation, and be conservative with the oils you choose.

A short, practical list

If you remember nothing else from this, remember this:

Ventilate. Open a window. Burn a candle in a room you are actually in, not one you have closed off. Place fragrance up and away. Keep an eye on your animal's behaviour — sneezing, drooling, lethargy, or refusing food after you light something new is information, not coincidence. And if you are ever unsure about a specific oil, your vet has heard the question a hundred times this month.

A final, slightly editorial note

There is a quiet pressure in lifestyle culture to make our homes look and smell a certain way — and somewhere along the line, our animals stopped being part of that conversation. I think that is the wrong way around. A home that smells beautiful but makes its smallest residents uncomfortable is not a beautiful home. It is just a well-marketed one.

The good news is you do not have to choose. A thoughtfully made candle, a clean reed diffuser, a window cracked open to the Gulf breeze, and ten animals — or one, or three — who feel entirely at ease in their own house. That is the brief. That has always been the brief.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Barfi's breakfast is now five minutes late and I am about to be reported to a higher authority. Possibly several.

— Guddi

From Rubble to Light: The Story of How Innara Was Born

I'm writing this with my ankle in a cast, propped up and going nowhere fast. There's something about being forced to be still that makes you look back — really look — at the road you've walked. And when I trace it all the way to the beginning, I'm still a little stunned by how it started.

It started with rubble.

2016. Dubai. A very quiet kind of falling apart.

I didn't know I was depressed. That's the thing about depression that nobody warns you about — it doesn't always announce itself with drama. Sometimes it just quietly empties you out. I wasn't crying every day. I wasn't unable to function. I was just... flat. Dim. Like a candle burning on the very last of its wax.

The only thing that got me out of bed were my pets Taz and Boonie. Every evening, that one obligation. Walk the dogs. Come home. That was the day.

Bonnie 2016

Around me, the city was doing what the city does — building. Everywhere I looked, construction sites. Scaffolding. Lots of rubble and aggregate heaped on roadsides like waiting be taken . And maybe that's why I noticed them — because I felt a little like that too. Left over.

I had spent years in events. My whole career had been cerebral — conceptualising, producing, creating experiences for other people. I was good at it. But it lives entirely in your head, that kind of work. And my head, in 2016, was not a place I wanted to spend more time.

My hands were desperate for something to do.

The hammer, the rubble, and the takeaway containers.

I started collecting rubble on my walks. I can't fully explain the impulse — it just felt right, the weight of it in my hands. I'd bring pieces home. I had no plan. I had an old hammer and a lot of quiet hours, and I started pulverising the construction waste into aggregate. There was something deeply satisfying about that. About making something smaller in order to eventually make something larger.

I used takeaway plastic containers as moulds. Mixed the crushed rubble with a little cement. Poured it. Waited. And slowly, rough and imperfect and entirely handmade, planters began to appear.

I should tell you: I have no green fingers. Every plant I've ever owned has given up on me. So the planters sat there, beautiful and empty, and I thought — what can I put in them that won't die?

just before the plants died on me

Old IKEA candles. I melted them down and poured the wax straight into my wabi-sabi jars.

And then I lit them.

I sat and watched them burn for a long time. There's something about a flame — the way it moves, the way it fills a room with warmth without asking anything from you. I felt, for the first time in a long time, a version of peace.

my first batch of candles

3am and the slow making of something real.

It didn't stay simple for long. The wax seeped through the concrete. The structure wasn't right. I'd lie awake at 3am — not anxiously, but curiously — researching. Wax types. Pour temperatures. Fragrance chemistry. Wick sizing. Concrete ratios. I taught myself, trial by trial, what worked and what didn't.

There's a particular kind of joy in that — in being a complete beginner with no ego about it. I wasn't trying to build a brand. I was trying to build something that worked. Something honest. Something that came from my hands and went out into the world and gave someone else that same small moment of warmth.

Slowly, the seepage stopped. The structure held. The scents became something I was proud of. The wax was vegan soy. The fragrances, phthalate-free. The concrete, sourced from what the construction industry was already throwing away.

What had begun as a way to survive the day was quietly becoming something else entirely.

Innara. إنارة. Illumination.

When it came time to name it, the word arrived almost on its own. Innara — إنارة — from Arabic, from the Quran. It means illumination. The bringing of light.

I sat with that for a while. Because it felt almost too fitting. From the darkest point I had known, in the quiet of those early mornings with a hammer and a pile of rubble and a dog who needed walking — light had come. Not suddenly. Not dramatically. Slowly, the way a candle fills a room. Burn by burn.

I don't say that lightly. I believe, and have always believed, that there was something larger than my own effort at work here. The way the right material appeared. The way the name found me. The way people responded. The 3am sessions that never felt like work. Some things you don't fully take credit for — you just say thank you and keep going.

What Innara is now.

We make home fragrances — candles, reed diffusers, room sprays — from recycled construction waste, vegan soy wax, and phthalate-free scents. We run workshops where we teach people to make things with their hands, because I know firsthand what that can do for a person. We work with businesses on private label products. We are based in Dubai, made in the UAE, and built on the belief that beauty and responsibility are not opposites.

Every product that leaves us carries a little of that first afternoon in it — the dust on my hands, the imperfect mould, the flame I lit and couldn't stop watching.

A note from a fractured ankle.

I'm writing this today because a fractured ankle gave me no choice but to sit still and think. And what I thought was: how did we get here?

I still don't have a complete answer. A little grit. A lot of 3am nights. An old hammer. A dog. And something I can only call grace.

If you're reading this in a quiet, difficult moment of your own — I want you to know that Innara was born in one of those. The rubble around you is not wasted. Sometimes it's exactly what you need to build from.

Light comes.

Guddi

Innara is a sustainable home fragrance brand based in Dubai, UAE. Our products are made from recycled construction waste, vegan soy wax, and phthalate-free fragrances. Shop our collection at innara.ae or find us on Instagram @innaradxb.