Black and grey realism tattoo of a black cat with a ruffled collar and bow inside an oval frame, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black cat with ruffled collar on thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic black cat face looks forward from within a dark oval frame, with its ears and whiskers softly shaded. Beneath the chin sits a pleated ruffled collar and a bow, rendered in smooth greys with strong highlights. The composition is centred on the thigh, with the oval backdrop fading into the skin around it.

Realism Thigh Cat Black cat Bow Oval frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mistress Ansell wanted her cat painted in a ruff, and Master Holloway said a cat would never keep still for a ruff, but he had never met Sable. The animal sat on the velvet cushion as though the cushion had been placed for her and the room arranged around her opinions. Tobias, who had ground the ochre for three years and been trusted with nothing but skies, was handed the oval panel and told to make the shadows deep enough to hide the dust.

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The laundress starched the collar twice, once for the sitting and once more because Sable had sat on the first. Eleven pleats, pressed by hand, and a bow of black silk tied so tight it lifted the cat's chin. Tobias worked the fur in short dark strokes, one hair at a time, the way his master had taught him to paint a wig. Each morning Sable came to the easel, studied the wet paint for a long while, then walked off without a word, and each morning he painted her eyes a little less kindly.

The panel was finished at Michaelmas. Master Holloway signed it in the corner, took his fee, and hung it above the stair where the light from the leaded window fell across it at noon. Mistress Ansell wept at the sight of it, then sent for a second panel, since the first looked so very like the cat.

Sable never came to see it. She sat instead on the bottom step each afternoon, ruff folded and neat, gazing up at the portrait as though checking Tobias's work.