Four views of a black and grey arm sleeve tattoo showing a cat figure with a headdress, birds in flight and ornamental scrollwork, across the upper arm and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat goddess and birds arm sleeve in black and grey

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The sleeve shows a seated cat figure wearing an ornate headdress and collar, with a second cat near the lower forearm and crows or ravens in flight above. Smoke or cloud forms and scrolling ornament fill the gaps between the figures. The work uses fine black outlines with grey shading and soft tonal gradients, and the four photographs show the design from the front, sides and back of the arm.

Forearm Upper arm Cat Headdress Bird Crow Raven Smoke Scrollwork Ornament Sleeve

Find an artist for this

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 cats came down from the temple roof the night the river flooded, and Ines counted them as they crossed the brass gate: eleven, twelve, and a thirteenth with one ear torn to lace. The old priest had told her the goddess kept her own tally of the living, and that when the tally came out wrong, the crows were sent to correct it. Ines did not believe him. She had believed in very little since her brother's boat went under below the weir.

Keep reading

She climbed the stair with a lamp that kept guttering. At the top the great seated cat waited in her headdress of smoke, the carved collar throwing shadow over the painted floor, her eyes two discs of lacquer that had never once looked away from anyone. Beside her, on the lower step, the smaller cat licked a paw as if the whole flood were a rumour. Ines set the lamp down between them and waited, the way she had been taught to wait at the fish market, for something to be weighed.

The crows arrived before the bell did, black and unhurried, settling on the scrolled cornice like ink dropped from a careless hand. One of them stepped forward and dropped a wet thread of river weed at Ines's feet. Then the great cat yawned, and the smoke from her crown curled out over the valley, and somewhere under the water a boat's bell rang once and stopped.

In the morning the fishermen found a rowing boat tangled in the reeds below the weir, its bow painted with a crow in flight. Ines was already walking back along the bank, carrying her brother's coat and the lamp, still lit.