Why would a cat put its head in my shoe and keep it there for a minute?

Was it warm maybe?

The cat was probably flehmening.

Had it passed out?

@wildpotato Thank you for teaching me a new word for the week! Flehmening.
Possible reasons for flemining? (per Wiki)
Identifying reproductive status
Reproductive synchrony
Inter-specific communication

Any or all three may apply to @ragingloli and felines.

Maybe he or she is testing their breath for freshness. I have no idea my dog does the same thing too. I will hear him snort inside the shoe. He seems to only do it in my husbands shoe.

Sometimes he even falls asleep with his face in a shoe. That seems to happen when it is cold. So I assume he doesn’t like breathing cold air and this may be a way to warm up the air a little.
I sleep under the blankets when the air is to cool and I have the sniffles. Maybe they do the same when they have a cold.
Or it is as @wildpotato suggests.

Must have been an American cat; imperialistic felines!

Possibly for the same reason my cat likes to burrow his head into my armpit. He likes or at least in some way is attracted to the smell.

Because it’s a cat.

If the cat smokes a cigarette later you’ll know.

It’s all about scent with cats, and considering their sense of smell is about a 100 times sharper than ours, well…the cat is probably picking up all sorts of interesting smells from that shoe. Putting it’s head inside most likely is just its way of investigating all the scents that shoe has picked up during its travels.

It senses your intentions for it and is attempting to hide itself.

It doesn’t understand that it would be more prudent to obscure it’s other end.

I used to crack up at all the dogs that obsessed over my boots & shoes some years ago when I had a horse, chickens, geese. Dogs would drag their owners to my boots and sniff up a storm.An entire barnyard of scents on those shoes. lol

I think they find the smells interesting or pleasant. When I was a kid we had a cat who used to fall asleep with her head inside my dad’s stinky old shoes.

Cats (and dogs) like smelly things.

Animals are especially curious. They respond rather strongly with scents. There’s probably something in your smell that the cat likes, or something which reminds her of similar odors.