Traditional colour tattoo on a lower leg showing a black cartoon cat holding an umbrella under a purple rain cloud, beside a green skull.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cartoon cat with umbrella and skull on a leg

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

A black cartoon cat holds a striped umbrella under a purple cloud with blue rain strokes, with musical notes floating to its left. A green and orange skull sits to the right, and part of another design with green and teal shading is visible at the left edge. Bold black outlines, solid fills and saturated colour are typical of traditional styling, and the photo is taken against a light blue drape.

Traditional Calf Cat Umbrella Rain Music note Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ivy,

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The studio has finally let me pin my own sketches to the board, so you may tell Mother I am a man of importance now, or at least a man with a drawing table by the window. The cat I have been working on is called Soot. He is black as a coal scuttle and walks as though the pavement owes him rent. Mr Halloran wants him to carry an umbrella in every reel, and I cannot for the life of me think why, except that the rain in this city never stops and the audiences like to see something sensible happen to it.

Last Thursday the projector jammed in the middle of Soot's song, and the whole front row of pensioners sat in the dark humming his tune back at the screen. The notes I drew to float beside him, a crotchet, a quaver with a tail like a question mark, were the only thing they could make out. Halloran said it was the most honest response he had ever had from an audience, and then he cried a little into his tea.

The skull is my contribution, which Halloran says is morbid and then pinned up anyway. Bone Jack, we call him, the one who stands behind the rain cloud and decides how hard it falls. I painted his teeth gold so he would look less like a warning and more like a man who has been smiling at the wrong joke for a hundred years.

Tell Father the ferry is not sinking and I am eating properly. The bread here is grey, but I have found a baker who gives the crusts away to the boys who sell papers. Write soon, and tell me whether the rain has reached you yet, because it will, and I want to know if you carried an umbrella.

Your loving brother, Ned