Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat in profile on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A simple outline of a cat seen in profile, facing left, with a long curling tail drawn in a single bold black line. The eye is filled with green ink, and a few faint whiskers appear in a reddish-brown tone. The design sits on pale skin against a grey carpet, shot from directly above.

Fine line Forearm Cat Tail Whiskers Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat has gone over the side twice this week, and twice you have been the one leaning out over the rail with the boathook, hauling her back by the scruff while she complains in a voice like a rusty block. Mrs Pargeter says the creature is too old for rats and too stubborn for sense. Tansy has never once been told what she may do.

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Captain Oddie swears she came aboard at Falmouth with a sailmaker's ticket tied to her collar, which nobody believes, but nobody argues either. She sits on the hatch at first light with her tail curled round her paws and her face turned into the wind, one green eye fixed on the horizon as if she had ordered it there. The men touch their caps to her. You have never seen them do that for the bosun.

Off the Horn the sea came green over the bow for three days. On the fourth night the lamp in the forepeak went out, and you went below with a tinderbox and a fear you did not mention to anyone. Tansy was already there, perched on the lamp locker, her tail drawn up tight as a stay. She did not move when you struck the flint. She only looked past you toward the bilge, where the water had found its way between the planks and was climbing.

You followed her gaze and found the leak. Two hours of pumping later, the Bonnie Jess limped into the Falklands with her crew alive and her cat asleep in the bread bin. In the morning Tansy was back on the hatch, tail curled in its neat black question mark, and nobody mentioned the lamp.