Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a cat in a space helmet with a red nebula, teal diamond frame and ringed planet on the upper arm.

Cat astronaut with nebula and planet on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A cat wearing an astronaut helmet and suit fills the centre of the design, with one paw raised. Bold black outlines and soft grey shading give the suit volume, while the cat's face is shaded in pink and red. Red nebula clouds with small white stars, a ringed planet, teal diamond outlines and teal shard shapes surround the figure, and the photo shows two angles of the same tattoo.

Neo-trad Upper arm Cat Astronaut Nebula Planet Star Diamond Space

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By three in the morning the ward has settled into the hum you have learned to trust, the monitors murmuring to each other like neighbours through a wall. You are checking drip charts on bed six when Marjorie from the linen room wheels past and says the cat has been in the sluice again, and would you please remove it before Sister comes on her round.

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You find him on top of the folded blankets, sitting bolt upright with his tail wrapped round his feet, staring at the window as though it owes him an explanation. Biscuit belongs to nobody and to everybody. He has a bowl behind the porters' desk and a reputation on every floor. Pinned above the cupboard is a drawing Kasia made on the back of a menu: a grey cat in a fishbowl helmet, one paw lifted, a ring of pink planets around its head. She is seven and has been in bed four since Tuesday, and she told you on your first night that the cat was going to the moon and somebody had to tell him the way.

You lift him off the blankets and he goes limp as a sack of flour, the way cats do when they have made their peace with being carried. At the window you stop. Below, the car park is wet and orange under the sodium lamps, and low over the bins a single bright planet hangs as if it has been left there to keep watch. Kasia is awake, one eye open above the blanket.

"Has he gone?" she whispers.

"Not yet. He's looking at the planet first," you tell her. "He needs a helmet up there so he can breathe. He's got one already, you just can't see it."

She nods, satisfied, and is asleep before you reach the sluice door. In the morning, Marjorie says, the cat is back on the blankets, looking out at the window as though nothing happened.