Solid black silhouette of a sitting cat with a curled tail, tattooed on a woman's upper back near the neck, seen from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat silhouette on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind with her hair tied up, showing a solid black silhouette of a sitting cat with its tail curling to one side. The cat is filled with flat black ink, with no visible shading or fine detail, and sits on the upper back just below the neck. The indoor background is plain and out of focus, with a checkered floor, a blue chair and a paper coffee cup.

Back Cat Sitting cat Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chandler's sign had been cracked for a month before Ruth Pellow cut the cat out of black card, because a shop on a fishing quay needed a cat and Tallow would not hold still long enough to be painted. She worked at the kitchen table with the good scissors, folding the card to keep the tail even, and when she was done the shape sat on the oilcloth like something poured and set. Upright, tail curled round the paws, the way he sat on the sill watching the gulls.

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She pinned it to the shop window to trace the gilt lettering around it, and that evening Tallow was found on the step below, sitting in exactly that shape. The lad from the ropeworks said he had seen him there at dawn, tail curled and very still, as though he were waiting for someone to open up. Ruth told herself it was coincidence and kept the card in the window through the winter, and the cat kept coming back to the step.

In March the sun got at one corner of the card and bleached it grey, and the cat began to lose his edges. His tail thinned to a whisker on the cobbles. Ruth took the card down and carried it home under her coat, and by the time she reached the kitchen Tallow was asleep on her chair, loose and ordinary, one paw hanging over the side as though he had never been anything but a cat.

She hung the card back in the window that night. In the morning the step was empty, and the black outline in the glass sat there with its tail curled, watching the gulls for both of them.