Realism-style tattoo of a tabby cat in a top hat within a laurel wreath, with a banner reading Jack the Ripper, on the upper thigh.

Cat in top hat portrait on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A realistic portrait of a long-haired tabby cat wearing a grey top hat, set inside an orange laurel wreath frame with a blue ribbon detail. A grey banner beneath the frame reads JACK THE RIPPER in block capitals. The shading is smooth and soft, with warm orange and blue tones, and the image is a close, straight-on photo of the thigh with denim shorts at the top edge.

Realism Neo-trad Thigh Cat Top hat Laurel wreath Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have the galley to yourself at four bells, which is the only hour the cook lets you keep the stove warm without someone shouting about the coal. The cat is already on the chopping board, as usual, sitting on the good knife's tea towel and looking at you the way the second mate looks at a late muster. Jack. Nobody aboard remembers who named him that, only that the name arrived with him at Valparaiso, stiff with rain, and that he took the top hat off a drowned purser's trunk within a week and has not once let it go.

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Today you have the biscuits to rescue. The tin lid is rusted shut and the damp has got into the oats, so you pry it open with a spoon and the cat watches, unimpressed, as the lid skids across the planks and under the bench. You kneel to fish it out. When you come up, Jack has climbed onto the rack above the sugar and sits there under his black hat like a magistrate, with a sprat's tail hanging from one corner of his mouth.

"Don't," you tell him.

He blinks slowly. It is the closest thing to an apology you will get on this voyage, and you have decided, somewhere off the Horn, that it will do.

You put the kettle on. Outside, the wind backs round to the south and the whole ship leans into it, and the pans on their hooks swing and chime like a bad-tempered choir. Jack jumps down, pads over, and settles against your shin, purring in the particular way that means the coffee is not for him but he has decided to be sociable about it anyway. You pour two cups. You leave one on the rail for the old cook, who went over the side off the Cape with the rest of the watch but who, as far as the cat is concerned, has never really left the galley.