Black and grey realism tattoo of a sitting cat with its tail curled down, on the left side of a person's ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat sitting on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small, shaded tattoo of a black cat seen from behind and side-on, sitting upright with its tail curling to the left. The cat is rendered in soft black and grey tones with smooth gradients along the body and fur, and some fine detail on the ears and tail. The tattoo sits centrally on the ribcage against a plain background of skin, with the top and leggings of the wearer partly visible.

Realism Ribs Cat Animal Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the autumn the Halloran Brothers' Travelling Circus had nine performers left, a leaking big top and a tiger that had been sold in March. What we still had was Pilot, a black cat who would not jump through anything. He sat on the plinth at the centre of the ring and watched the empty seats the way other animals watch weather, tail curled round his feet like a question nobody had asked.

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Mrs Dunmore, who ran the ticket booth and the accounts in the same sticky ledger, wanted him sold to a pet shop in Leeds. I said we would lose more than the cat. The lights were down that night, the generator coughing, and Pilot was on the plinth as always, back to the crowd, looking out at a dark that nobody was paying for.

At the last show the audience was four children and a man who had lost his dog. Pilot walked the length of the ring, stopped at the gap in the canvas where the wind came through, and sat down facing it. The children laughed, then went quiet. Nobody bought a ticket after that, but the man stood up and clapped until his hands hurt.

In the morning the wagons were gone, the canvas folded in a heap, and Pilot was sitting on the bottom step of the caravan with his back to me, tail curled left, waiting for the road to decide where we were going. We had been a circus for ninety years. He was the only one of us who ever seemed to know we were leaving, and I took the step beside him.