Black fine line tattoo of a stretching cat with a curled tail and four paw prints above it, on the upper back of a person seen from behind.

Cat and paw prints on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black fine line tattoo of a cat with an arched back, raised tail curling at the top and whiskers on its face, sits on the upper back. Four small paw prints rise above the cat in a diagonal trail towards the nape of the neck. The ink is solid black with no shading, set against pale skin in a simple, centred composition.

Fine line Back Cat Paw print Tail Whiskers

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair came into Harrowby the week the big wheel was repainted, and with it came a grey tom called Ashby who belonged to nobody. He slept on the lid of the test-strength barrel and took sausage rolls off the tea stall when Mrs Pell's back was turned, which was always.

Keep reading

On the last night, the showman's daughter, Nell, found him on the steps of the caravan with his back up like a footbridge, spitting at the rain. She had a pot of gold leaf from the sign-writer and a brush she'd borrowed from the donkey harness. "Hold still," she said. He did not hold still. He arched higher, as if to show her his best side, and his tail rose up and over and curled at the tip like a question mark that had decided to stay one.

By morning the fair was gone to the next town and the field was a mess of ruts and paper. Nell went back for the last of the lamps and found the cat sitting in the middle of the wet chalk where the lane met the hedge. He looked at her, washed one paw, and set off uphill towards Harrowby Top. Every step he took pressed a print into the chalk, four pads and a little toe bean, climbing the slope one after another, until the hedge swallowed him.

Nell kept the brush. The wheel was sold for scrap the year after, and nobody ever saw Ashby again. But on any morning after a fair, if you walk the lane up to the Top before the sun gets to the dew, you will find those prints going uphill, as though someone had decided the sky was worth the climb.