Two black ink tattoos on forearms: a crowned cat silhouette inside a dotted oval cameo on the left, and a pentagram within a spiked circle on the right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat cameo and pentagram on forearms

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two tattoos sit side by side on the inner forearms. The left shows a solid black cat silhouette wearing a crown, framed by a dotted oval border and scrollwork at top and bottom. The right shows a five-pointed star inside a circle with a spiked outer ring, with small marks set in the points of the star. The work is bold, solid black with no colour, and the photo is shot close up against striped bedding.

Geometric Forearm Cat Crown Cameo Scrollwork Pentagram Circle Star Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top had been down for three days when Mr Vance finally asked me to paint the ring, and I knew from the way he held the tin of white gloss that he meant it to be the last thing we ever did under canvas. Forty years the Vance and Dorrit Circus had gone round the seaside towns, and now it was Skegness car parks and a rented field behind a pub in Boston. I sat on an upturned crate and marked out the five points with a length of string while Duchess, the old tabby, watched from her basket with her paper crown knocked crooked.

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Duchess was never a magic cat, whatever the posters said. She was a plain tabby who had learned to sit on a velvet cushion and wait for her cue. Still, Dorrit had cut her a crown from foil and gilt card, and in the last season she would stroll the high rope like she held the deed to it. On the final night she walked out to the centre pole, looked down at the spiked sun I'd painted on the sawdust, and sat down in the middle of the star as if she had been invited.

Nobody saw her leave. The Hollis boy swore the cage was latched. When we searched the lorries at dawn there was only the cushion, and a damp smudge on the boards in the shape of a paw. Mr Vance stood in the empty ring with his hat in his hands and said nothing for a long time.

I painted the star again the next morning, every point of it, and set the cushion in the middle. Some mornings I still walk out to the field before the lorry comes and find the paint dry and the cushion pressed flat, as though someone small has only just got up from it.