Japanese style tattoo of a grey cat with green eyes holding a red daruma doll, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat holding a daruma doll on a thigh

Japanese · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A grey cat with a dark patterned coat and green eyes holds a red daruma doll, with its tail curling below. The linework is bold and black, with shading in grey tones on the cat and striped yellow and red detail behind the doll. Red and yellow ink dominate the colour, set against plain pale skin with the thigh filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The daruma had been on the veranda rail since spring, and by August Mochi had decided it belonged to her. Every morning I found it moved: tipped onto the step, tucked under the azalea, or sat upright in the stone basin where the rain had collected. The doll had only one eye painted, the left, a small black dot with a fine brush. The rule my aunt Setsuko taught me was that you paint one eye when you make a wish and the other when it comes true, so the doll stayed half finished and hopeful.

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Mochi carried it about the garden with her tail curled like a question mark. My aunt said the cat wanted a wish of her own. I told her cats do not wish. Setsuko only laughed and said cats are the only creatures who know what a wish costs, which is why they never bother to make one.

In the monsoon week I came out at dusk and found the doll at the edge of the koi pond, its red robe darkening in the rain. Mochi sat beside it with her striped tail wrapped round her paws, both of them watching the carp gather under the lantern. The carp rose and sank, rose and sank, as if they were counting. I picked up the doll and saw that the water had not washed away the left eye at all.

I took the brush from the ink stone, crouched on the wet step, and painted the second eye. Mochi stretched, yawned at me, and padded off along the stones with her tail up, as if the wish had been hers to collect all along.

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