Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat head with leaves on forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black cat's head faces right in profile, with a thin outline for the whiskers and a small pale eye. Solid black fill forms most of the cat, with pink-red inner ears and a subtle red accent, set against a sprig of black leaves and thin stems on the left. The bold, flat fills and limited palette sit against the skin with plain white background space around the design.

Traditional Forearm Cat Black cat Cat head Leaves Branch Whiskers Profile

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat came down to the slipway every evening the boats were out, sitting on the cold stones with her back to the village and her face to the water. Nobody on Scarrisay owned her. Old Euan said she belonged to the island the way the tide did, and that a black cat looking at you in profile was only counting who had gone out and who was coming back.

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The October Tam Laird failed to come in, the whole harbour stood on the wall until the light went. Nessa stood with them, a sprig of blackthorn leaves in her coat pocket, which she had cut that morning for no reason she could name. The cat did not come to the wall. She went out along the rocks at the point, ears flat against the wind, and stopped where the spray was thickest. Then she turned her head to look back at Nessa, as if she expected to be followed.

Nessa followed her. Past the point, in the lee of the dark skerry, the Mary Ann lay with her engine dead and her sail in a heap, Tam bailing with a bucket and swearing at the sea in the voice he used for the dog. The cat sat on the gunwale, perfectly still, her pale eye fixed on the lamp Nessa held up, until the tow rope came snaking across the swell.

They brought the boat in at the top of the tide. Nessa kept the leaves on the sill of her window after that, and every evening when she went down to the slipway the cat was already waiting with her back to the village. She would look at Nessa sideways, whiskers out, as though to ask whether the count was right yet.