Colour tattoo of a cat's face with a butterfly beside it on the upper back, shaded in soft purple and blue with orange eyes.

Cat face and butterfly on a shoulder blade

Back · Mixed · Photo

A cat's face with orange eyes, pink nose and long whiskers sits on the upper back beside a butterfly with outlined wings. The butterfly has a black outline and soft grey shading, while the cat is built from blended, painterly shading in purple, blue and pink. The mix of crisp outline and soft colour gives the piece a loose, watercolour-like finish against the skin.

Back Cat Cat face Butterfly Whiskers Eye

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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

Now you'll want to know why the old cat of Hollin Wood never once caught a butterfly, though she chased every one that ever crossed the lane. Sit closer, the fire's nearly out and I'll not shout it twice.

Keep reading

She had eyes the colour of marmalade held up to a candle, and whiskers that spread wider the more she wanted something. Every summer the blue-winged moths came down off the beeches to drink at the millpond, and every summer she crept along the wall with her belly to the stones. The miller's boy, Tobias Greave, used to lay bets on her. Nobody ever paid out.

One evening in late August a pale grey moth came too low, and the cat sprang, and the moth did not fly away. It settled on the tip of her nose and stayed there while the light drained from the sky. The boy came running with his jar and his net, and the cat, who had waited her whole life for a thing worth catching, sat very still and let the moth rest.

Here is the turn, and mind it. That moth had been a message from the far side of the wood, from a girl who had lain down under the beeches and forgotten the way home. The cat walked it down the lane on the end of her nose, and the girl was found by the millpond at dawn with dew in her hair. Some say the cat was never hungry again. I say she had simply found the one thing in Hollin worth stopping for.