Black and grey traditional tattoo of a crescent moon with a face and a black cat sitting on it, on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat on a crescent moon

Traditional · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A crescent moon with a carved-looking face in profile sits on the left, with a black cat perched on its lower edge facing the moon. The moon is shaded in grey with bold black outlines, while the cat is solid black with a white chest patch and a curled tail. The design sits against plain, pale skin on a single calf with a simple, centred composition.

Traditional Calf Moon Crescent moon Cat Black cat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Don't look at me like that, Mrs Pell. The moon was up over Scarrow Head the night Tobias Quill lost his boots to a wager, and the black cat from the lodging house was already sitting on the moon's lower edge, the way cats sit on things that aren't theirs. Tobias had been drinking with the fishermen at the Anchor, and he'd grown bold, so he shouted up the cliff path that the man in the moon was a coward who couldn't cross the bay without a lamp.

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The man in the moon answered in the voice of a wet gull. He said he had been lonely since the first tide, that nobody looked up at him without wanting something, and he would take Tobias's boots for one dry night. Tobias agreed, being a fool, and walked home barefoot over the shingle with his toes gone blue. The next morning the cat was not in the lodging house, and nobody could say where it had slept. Nobody could say where Tobias's boots had gone either, though Mr Harker swore he saw them climbing the cliff at dusk.

Here is the part they don't tell in the Anchor. The cat went up to keep the moon company, and it has kept him company ever since. Every night it curls on the crescent's edge with its white chest puffed out, its tail hanging down over the water like a bell rope, and the moon sits still and sulks at the sea because he has someone to face. When the cat is sleeping, the rain stays out over the bay. When the cat is awake and watching the lanes, that is the time to go in and bolt your door.

Now, who's for another cup of tea, and who is going to fetch me my boots?