Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a cat in a striped jumper fishing from a rowboat under a dotted crescent moon, on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat fishing from a rowboat on the upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A cat wearing a striped jumper sits in a rowboat, holding a fishing rod with a small crescent moon as the lure. Behind it, a large dotted moon, two small clouds and stylised waves frame the scene. The work uses fine linework and stippled dotwork for the shading, with solid black areas on the moon and the lower waves, and it is shown in black and grey ink on the upper back.

Dotwork Blackwork Back Cat Crescent moon Cloud Wave Stripe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The moon had been dangling off the end of Mr Gorse's line for three nights before anyone in Saltcombe thought to mention it to the cat. He sat in his rowboat past the breakwater in the striped jumper Mrs Pell had knitted him, his tail trailing over the side like a wet rope, and he watched the lure turn slowly in the dark. The crescent was only a tin scrap he had cut from a biscuit lid, but the water had decided it was silver, and the fish had decided the moon was worth a try.

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By the fourth night the harbour lamps looked dim and the gulls kept circling as though they had lost a sum. Old Harry Venn stood on the slipway with his hands in his pockets and said the tide had gone lazy. The children hung out of their bedroom windows counting stars that were not quite where they should be. Mr Gorse only blinked at them from his seat and kept his eyes on the line.

Then the rod bent so hard the boat dipped, and the waves came up in neat grey rings all around him. He braced his paws on the oar and hauled, slowly, one pull and then another, until something enormous and pale rose out of the black water and hung there, dripping light. He looked at it for a long moment. Then he let the line go slack and rowed back to the slipway with the rod across his knees.

The moon went up again that night, a little thinner than before, and Mr Gorse fixed the tin crescent to the prow as a lantern. Harry Venn still grumbles that the cat owes the harbour a fish, but nobody in Saltcombe has asked for the moon back since.