Black and grey photograph of a solid black cat tattoo stretched down the upper arm, with its tail curling over the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat silhouette on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a cat stretches downwards across the skin, with its tail curling up and over the shoulder. The cat has pale highlights in its eyes, and the body is filled with flat black ink with smooth, bold edges. The photograph is black and grey, with a dark background that makes the tattoo stand out against the lighter skin.

Upper arm Cat Black cat Tail Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Harrowdene had seen the lord of the castle since the frost year, but the black cat still came down the crumbling stair each evening, stretched itself the length of the bottom step, and flicked its tail over the broken parapet as if ringing a bell for the dead. Old Mags Pennock said it was counting them. Her grandmother said it was keeping the gate.

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Tam Croft was eleven and believed neither of them. He climbed the hill in March with a sack and a borrowed hammer, meaning to prise the lead off the chapel roof and sell it in Ashby for bread money. The gatehouse door hung open on one hinge. Inside, the air smelt of wet ash and something sweeter, like apples gone soft in straw.

The cat was waiting in the passage. It did not hiss. It walked ahead of him with its back arched and its tail hooked up like a question mark, stopping at each doorway until he caught up, then pressing its body long against the flagstones as though to show him where the floor would hold. Where it lay down, the boards were sound. Where it did not, he went around. At the end of the passage was a cellar grate, and beneath it a case of tarnished silver and a ring on a cord.

Tam took the ring and left the silver. When he looked back from the gate, the cat was stretched along the top step with its tail curled over the sill, watching him go the way a mason watches a wall he has built true.