Shaded cat face with yellow eyes inside black ornamental mandala linework, tattooed on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat face within a mandala on a calf

Blackwork · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A shaded cat face with pale yellow eyes sits at the centre of a symmetrical mandala design. Fine and bold black linework forms the petals, scrollwork and a pendant-like motif below the face, while the cat's fur is rendered in soft greys. The design fills a vertical panel on the calf, with a chair and a poster visible in the blurred background.

Blackwork Geometric Calf Cat Mandala Face Eye Ornament Pendant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ansell has finally let the cat past the bobbin room, though she swears it is only because the frost has got into the pattern books. We call her Tabby Gull, though she answers to nothing, and she sits on the cutting table with her eyes the pale yellow of cold candle wax, watching my hands.

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Every piece we finish has to be laid out in rounds, petal inside petal, the way the old Honiton women worked it. Each round must mirror itself down the middle or the whole thing is spoiled. Last Tuesday I set a pin one hole wrong, and the cat came down off the shelf and sat on my sleeve until I found it.

I unpicked three inches that night by the stove. When I finished, the cat was looking at the teardrop of thread at the foot of the panel, the one we always tie off last, as if it were the only thing in the room that had been counted correctly.

Mrs Ansell wants it on the Exeter coach in the morning. I wrapped it in tissue and turned to fetch the twine, and when I came back the cat was asleep in the box with one paw across the centre, keeping the design flat until spring.