Black and grey traditional tattoo of a cat silhouette in an oval cameo frame with flowers and a pearl drape, on a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat cameo on upper back

Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black cat silhouette sits on a blossoming branch inside an oval cameo with a scalloped border, with a rose-like flower and leaves at the top, a butterfly to the side, and a strand of pearls hanging from the base. The outlines are bold and solid, and the background inside the frame is shaded with fine stippling in grey. The ink is black and grey, with the blossoms left white, and the design is centred on the upper back.

Traditional Botanical Back Cat Cameo Flower Blossom Branch Butterfly Pearl Necklace Silhouette Leaves

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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 cat is already on the bowsprit when you come down the quay at four, its tail hooked over the rail as if it had been poured there. Nobody in Porthgwidden fleet owns it. Ada at the chandlery calls it Mrs Pell, the crews call it luck, and you have never once been asked to choose between the two.

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Your father's cameo sits in your coat pocket, the brass oval rubbed soft where his thumb used to go. Behind the glass there is a branch in white blossom and a shape that might be a bird. He bought it in Newlyn the winter the Marigold went down with two men and a boy, and he never said why he picked a cat. You wear it on the Tuesday runs because he did, and because the sea seems to like being given something to look at.

By seven the fog has rolled in off the Lizard so thick you cannot see the bow from the wheel. The other boats are calling on the radio, voices you know from thirty years of quay gossip, and the nets are heavy with fish you cannot afford to lose. Then something lands on the wheelhouse roof with a soft thud. The cat sits there, grey in the murk, tail curled, its face turned towards lights you cannot see yet.

You put the helm over and follow it. It never looks back, not once, and when the hull grinds on the slip at Porthgwidden the roof is empty. The cameo is warm against your chest, as though someone has been holding it the whole way in.