Why does my cat like my headphones?

I'm sitting in my room trying to get some work done on my computer and my cat barges in and starts meowing. After some whining she jumps up on my dresser and makes a beeline towards my earbud headphones that were lying there. She then begins to lick them...

At this point I'm confused. Why is she licking my headphones of all things? The only thing I could think of that was on there was ear wax. After watching for a few more seconds with morbid fascination I had to know if this was common behavior. To the internet!

Apparently it is quite common, as many other people have noticed the same thing. The link I like the best is http://www2.b3ta.com/files/cat-earwax-conundrum.htm (Seriously, read the whole thing it's not that long).

"The principal constituent components of earwax are complex sebaceous fluids and sloughed off dead skin cells. The sebaceous fluids are composed mostly of triglyceride fatty acids, waxes and cholesterol esters."

To cats who don't seem to care about the taste of food that much it sounds like a tasty treat. However the best quote from that page is

"A cat will eat small lumps of plasticine if they're covered in gravy. Try it - it's non-toxic and you can pepper your cat turds with interesting multicoloured lumps." Interesting...