Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of a caracal head with tufted ears on a forearm, drawn with loose, scratchy linework.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Caracal head sketch on forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A caracal's head in profile sits on the outer forearm, with long tufted ears extending beyond the top of the arm. The linework is loose and sketchy, with fine hatched shading on the face and cheek and whisker strokes trailing off the muzzle. The image is black and white, with a person in a white top and jeans standing behind the arm on a grey pavement.

Fine line Forearm Cat Whiskers Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The king's cat has eaten the Chancellor's second-best gloves, and I am told this is my fault, Mirela, though I have never once lent her a thing. In the old travel books she is called a caracal. Here in Vell we have only ever called her Tuft, after the black brushes on her ears that catch the lamplight as if someone has pinned dark feathers to her head.

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Every afternoon Master Orrin the draughtsman climbs the east stair with a stick of charcoal and sits across from her, trying to fix her face on paper before she moves. He complains that her cheek is nothing but hatching, that a true caracal has no firm edges at all, only strokes where the light wanders off to find somewhere quieter. He has given up on her whiskers entirely. They simply trail from her muzzle like smoke from a snuffed candle, and he says the paper can keep whatever they do not touch.

Last week the Chancellor sent word that she is to go south as a gift for the Duke of Ashgrave, who keeps a menagerie of things that cannot be bought. Last night I unbarred the postern gate, meaning to take her to the river. She was already sitting on the wall above the road, ears lifted, watching the dark line of the southern hills. She did not run. She turned that pale, unblinking eye on me as if to ask whether I was coming, then dropped into the vineyards and was gone.

I have left the gate unbarred. If the Duke wants a cat, let him find one who does not know the way home. Burn this letter once you have read it, and tell Orrin his drawing was right after all: there is no edge to her anywhere.