Black ink tattoo of a stylised sitting cat with a long curled tail, on a shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black line cat tattoo on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A stylised black cat sits in profile with its head turned toward the viewer, its tail curling up behind it. The bold black outlines are filled with solid black areas on the face and tail, with the body left as bare skin. The tattoo sits on a plain pale area of skin with soft natural lighting and no other elements in the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Porthgarrow could agree whose the cat was, which suited it fine. It turned up on the fish quay the spring my father's boat was laid up for good, a black thing with a face like a folded letter and a tail curled up behind it like a question. Mrs Penhallow swore it was hers. Mr Tregear swore it had lived under his net loft since before the war. I fed it the heads my father used to throw back, and it took them politely, never once taking its eyes off me.

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It was the turning of its head that I noticed first. Every cat I knew walked away from you. This one sat, then looked back over its shoulder at the harbour mouth and the lamp on the breakwater, then back at me, as if checking I was still following. By August I had started following it: along the wall to the slipway, past the crab pots, up the steep lane to the chapel steps where the gulls wouldn't go.

On the last evening of the season the tide came in fast over the causeway and I was caught on the wrong side of it with a basket of unsold mackerel and no torch. I stood still, as the old men had taught me, and felt rather than saw the cat come down the rocks. It led me, stopping every few yards to glance back, until the water fell away from my boots and the lane lay ahead, lit gold from the pub windows.

When I turned to thank it, the wall was empty. Next morning Mrs Penhallow was at my door with the cat in her arms, saying it had slept on her step all night and wouldn't be moved. I still don't know whose it is. I only know it has never once walked away from me without looking back.

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