Black ink flash drawing of a cat's head inside an ornate oval scrollwork frame, in a fine line style that could work as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat in an ornate oval cameo frame

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing of a cat's face tilted upwards, with detailed fur strokes, almond-shaped eyes and long whiskers. The cat sits inside an oval cameo-style frame edged with beading and surrounded by curling scrolls and leaf-like flourishes. The image uses black linework only on white paper, with a fineliner pen lying across the top edge.

Fine line Cat Scrollwork Whiskers Portrait Flourish

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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

Dearest Ros, the cat has been at the frame again. I came up the east stair this morning with the lamp still lit and found the cameo hanging crooked on its nail, the glass fogged on the inside as if someone had breathed on it from the wrong side. Mr Galloway says it's damp. Mr Galloway says a great many things before his tea.

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The portrait is all that's left of the Ashdown money. It shows a grey cat with its chin lifted, the sort of look a cat gives a footman who has come in without knocking, set inside a frame of curled iron leaves and beading. Lady Ashdown had it painted the year before the roof went. Nobody has ever told me why a cat merited the best frame in the house, but the scrollwork is cut so fine you can still count the beads with your thumb, and the glass has never cracked.

Last night I sat up with the lamp and watched it. Nothing moved, but at two o'clock the whiskers on the left side seemed longer than before, reaching out past the beading toward the window as though they had caught a draught. This morning there was a small black fleck on the sill, and the fineliner that has lain on the stone since the surveyors left was uncapped and dry.

I've put the cap back on and left the pen where it lay. If she wants to finish her portrait, let her. I only ask that she leave the scrollwork alone. Come up at Easter and bring your good boots, the stair is worse than it was.

Love, Moira