Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat head with scrollwork on calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A black cat is shown in profile with bright yellow eyes and long white whiskers, set against a circular orange and yellow backdrop. Yellow scrollwork curls around the top of the design, and thin dripping lines and dotted accents trail below the circle. The shading is smooth and realistic on the cat, with bold outlines and saturated colour across the surrounding ornament.

Neo-trad Calf Cat Black cat Whiskers Scrollwork Circle Drip

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat had come up the gangway with the mackerel boats in March and nobody had claimed her. By June Mags Penhallow, who kept the chandlery at the bottom of Quay Street, had given up pretending the stool behind the till was hers to offer. The cat sat there with her tail wrapped over her feet and watched the door the way the harbourmaster watched the tide tables.

Keep reading

Her eyes were the colour of the brass fittings Mags polished every Friday, and when the evening sun dropped behind the breakwater they lit the shop like two small lamps. Mags's late husband had hung a gilt mirror above the counter, its frame curled with leaves, and the cat liked to sit beneath it and look at the orange light spilling across the floorboards. Wax from the old paraffin lamp had dripped down the sill in pale threads that nobody had ever scraped away.

The trouble arrived on a Tuesday in a grey anorak with a clipboard and a notice about vermin. He looked at the cat, then at the sacks of rope and the tins of paint, and said the animal would have to go to the rescue in Penzance before the inspector came back. Mags took the clipboard from him, read the notice slowly, and asked whether he had ever in his life seen a rat with a face like that.

He left without an answer. That evening the sun went down into the harbour and the cat stretched along the sill until the wax threads glowed gold. In the morning the notice was gone from the step, and in its place sat a small paper boat, folded carefully, with a single whisker tucked inside its sail.