Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat head and blossoms on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A cat's head in profile sits in the upper part of the design, with its ears, whiskers and eye picked out in solid black and soft grey shading. Dark leaves and small five-petalled blossoms curl around the cat in a rounded cluster. The tattoo is shown in sharp focus on a bare lower leg against a dark grey background.

Neo-trad Botanical Calf Cat Flower Blossom Leaves Branch Foliage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The grey cat had been sitting on the orchard wall since before the wine was poured, and Iphis the gardener was losing patience with her. "She eats the finches and sleeps in the almond boughs," he told the steward, wiping his hands on his tunic. The steward, who had counted every fig on the estate that summer, only shrugged. Nobody in Alexandria owned a cat. Cats, as everyone knew, owned houses.

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The cat turned her head at the sound of the gate. Her ears lay flat, and the lamplight caught the pale fur along her jaw. Behind her the wild cherry had come into flower overnight, five white petals to each blossom, and the leaves were so dark after the rain they looked cut from slate. Iphis had planted that tree as a boy, in the year his mother died, and he had never once seen it bloom so early.

That night a viper slid out from the cistern stones toward the sleeping steward's sandals. The cat did not hurry. She walked down from the wall with her tail held high, sat between the snake and the sandals, and waited until the steward woke and shouted himself hoarse. Afterwards Iphis carried the dead viper to the midden and came back to find the cat already curled in the lowest branch, petals settling on her back.

By the next full moon she had a basket of her own under the cherry, lined with the steward's old linen. Iphis swept the fallen blossom from her fur each morning, and nobody had to ask him to.