Neo-traditional tattoo of a black cat with red eyes and a white cross on the forehead, set on red splatter on the back of a hand.

Black cat with cross on hand

Neo-trad · Hand · Mixed · Photo

A black cat's head fills the back of the hand, with a white cross on its forehead and red-irised eyes with white highlights. The fur is shaded with grey and fine black strokes, and red splatter surrounds the head. Partial lettering, a letter K, sits on the fingers below.

Neo-trad Traditional Hand Cat Black cat Cross Eye Splatter Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Don't stare into Vesper's eyes for long, not on a first night. Old Halloran swore the cat had been born with two red coins for irises, and folk who held her gaze in the sideshow tent came out counting their change wrong. Mind you, Halloran was a liar and a drunk, and the tent was only ever a patched bell of canvas that smelt of wet horses and paraffin. The Marvel had been dying for ten winters by then, and everybody knew it except the ringmistress.

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Mrs Peel sold the elephant to a scrapyard in Doncaster and kept the cat, because the cat would not be sold. The preacher's wife in Selby called that white mark on Vesper's brow the devil's brand. The strongman said it was only chalk from the dressing tent, rubbed off the ring boards and stuck where it stuck. Whatever it was, the cat would walk the high wire at dusk with her tail up like a question, and nobody on the ground ever saw her fall.

On the last night the rain came sideways across the field at Hessle, and the red paint pot the clown had knocked over ran down the tent poles like something alive. The rope went slack at the far end. Mrs Peel stood with her hands over her mouth. Then the lamps went out one by one, and in the dark there were only those two red coins moving along the wire, steady, unhurried, until she reached the far platform and sat down to wash her face.

In the morning the field was empty except for a line of small red paw prints leading through the wet grass to the gate, and a single white cross of chalk on the step of the empty caravan. Halloran always said the cat had simply gone home. I never asked him where home was, and he never told me, which is the only honest thing I ever heard him say.