Traditional style tattoo of a black cat with orange eyes and a red collar, beside a red rose and green leaves, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat and rose on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black cat with orange eyes and a red collar peers out in bold outlines with solid black shading and grey highlights. A red rose with green leaves sits below it, with small black asterisk-like sparkles scattered around the design. The palette combines black and grey with red, orange and green accents, set against bare skin with a patterned white top and dark trousers in the background.

Traditional Forearm Cat Rose Leaves Collar Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat had been living under the left-luggage counter at Hollin Bridge for a fortnight before anyone thought to ask whose it was. Mrs Akroyd from the buffet said it belonged to Platform Two, the ticket inspector swore it was the signal box's, and the porter called it Sergeant because it sat so straight. When I crouched down with a corner of cold sausage roll, it came out slowly, red collar bright against its black coat, orange eyes fixed on mine as if I owed it money.

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The brass tag had no name, only a Leeds phone number scratched so many times it had worn into a row of dents. I rang it from the lost property phone on a Tuesday afternoon. A woman answered, her voice full of kettle noise. She had moved in March and left the cat with her brother, and her brother had since signed on with a trawler out of Hull. "Keep him," she said. "He's been a nuisance to everyone except the people who feed him, so you'll fit right in."

I took him home on the 17:42 in a shoebox with air holes punched in the lid by the porter. At every stop he stood up on his back legs and pressed his nose to the gap, watching the platform lamps slide past as if he were counting them. Somewhere past Thornbury a guard came through, looked at the box, and said nothing at all, which I took as a blessing.

At the end of the line I walked him up the hill past the florist's, where a bucket of red camellias stood by the door. I bought one stem, because the man inside said it was the last of the week and somebody ought to have it. That night the cat settled on the windowsill beside the bloom with his tail wrapped round his feet. Over the cutting the sky had come out in small white stars, and I left the curtain open so he could keep count.