Neo-trad tattoo of a black maneki-neko cat with a crescent moon, pentagram, peach flowers and small white cats on a forearm.

Black maneki-neko cat on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large black cat seated in the maneki-neko pose holds a gold oval panel with Chinese characters, wearing a red collar with gold bells and a pentagram and crescent moon pendant. A small white cat sits on its head and another sits at its lower left, with peach flowers, orange flames and purple shapes behind. The bold outlines and solid black fill are paired with rich colour and soft shading, and the image shows the same forearm tattoo from three angles.

Neo-trad Japanese Forearm Black cat Maneki-neko Crescent moon Pentagram Flower Flame Collar Bell Coin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had been falling for three days when Mabel Renshaw went out to the byre at first light and found the black cat sitting on the milk churn with a gold coin in its lap. Nobody on Hollin Fold had seen it arrive. The coin was the size of a hen's egg, stamped with characters Mabel could not read, and the cat wore a red collar hung with brass bells, a little pewter pentagram and a crescent moon.

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Her brother Dan, who had come up the lane on foot with his boots full of snow, said the coin was luck and luck was for sharing. Mabel said it was a cat's coin and cats did not share. Still, when the cat lifted one paw and crooked it at the lane, slowly, the way a shopkeeper beckons a customer in out of the rain, she found herself taking down the lantern.

Half a mile along the road a carter's horse had gone lame in a drift, and the man sat beside it with his hands in his armpits, too cold to shout. Mabel brought him up to the kitchen. The cat stayed on the windowsill all night, its two white kittens curled on its head, watching the fire. Dan kept asking where the coin had come from. Mabel kept her answer to herself, which was that nobody had ever once asked her to pay for a bowl of soup.

By morning the thaw had started and the bells were ringing softly in the draught. The carter had gone, leaving a heel of bread and a copper penny under the saucer. The cat had gone too, but the coin lay on the churn, warm as a hand, and the pawprints in the frost of the yard ran all the way to the gate and stopped there, one paw raised.