Colour tattoo of a grey cat with yellow-green eyes, pink lilies and lilac blooms on swirling vines across the upper arm and shoulder, in a soft pastel background.

Black cat and lilies on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A grey cat with yellow-green eyes sits in three-quarter view, framed by pink lilies, a lilac dahlia-like bloom, a purple hibiscus-like flower and curling green vines. The cat's fur uses soft blended shading, while the flowers and swirling stems have clean outlines. Pastel watercolour-style washes of pink, yellow and green fill the background, and the composition is shown across three mirrored views of the same arm.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Shoulder Cat Black cat Lily Flower Dahlia Hibiscus Vine Swirl Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The miller's daughter, Ada Vell, was to marry the cooper's son at the first frost, and the house was full of lilies because her mother had sworn the church would smell of them. Grey Tansy, the house cat, took no notice of the wedding until the morning the lilies were carried in from the cold room and she sat down among the buckets and would not move.

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Her mother shooed her off three times. Each time the cat walked back to the pale pink heads on the table and lay with her tail curled round the stems like a bell rope. "She is guarding them," said the old nurse, who had seen a great many weddings. "A cat that sits on flowers is telling you the flowers are not finished."

At the church the green stems were wound along the pews, and nobody thought of the cat at all. Then the vicar lifted his hand for the ring, and the lilies along the altar rail began to lean together towards the east window, where the light came through in a sheet. Ada saw her father's face go strange. Under the lilies a grey tail was curling across the flagstones, slow as a question.

Ada slid the brass ring off her own finger and onto the cooper's son's hand, and he did not ask why it was so worn. Afterwards nobody could say how the cat had got into the church, only that the lilies stayed fresh until Candlemas, and that Tansy went on sitting in the sun with her yellow-eyed look, as if she had arranged the whole business and was waiting to be thanked.