Black and white flash design of a cat in a top hat with a spade card, bow tie and cigar, flanked by roses and leaves, with the words Lie to the Liars and Steal from Thieves arced around it.

Cat in top hat with roses and slogan

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A cat wearing a top hat with a spade playing card on the band, a bow tie and a cigar, drawn in bold white linework on a black background. Sprigs of roses and leaves sit on either side of the face, and the arched text reads Lie to the Liars above and Steal from Thieves below, with 777 between them. The shading is minimal and built from hatching and solid areas, giving a traditional, badge-like composition.

Traditional Cat Top hat Playing card Spade Rose Leaves Bow tie Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the Crown and Anchor had ever seen Mr Tibbs sit down to a hand he hadn't already read. He came in at ten past nine, took the chair nearest the stove, tipped his top hat to the room and laid a single spade on the baize like a man placing a bet on his own funeral. Across from him sat Josiah Aske, chandler, who had sold the harbour a whole season of tarred hemp that snapped like cotton the first time it took weight.

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"You told the coroner you'd never clapped eyes on a rope of mine," Tibbs said, drawing on his cigar. "Lie to the liars, Josiah. It's the only courtesy left in this town."

Aske laughed, dealt, and lost the first three hands before he stopped laughing. By midnight the pot stood at four hundred pounds, the stove was ticking, and the chandler's cheeks had gone the colour of raw ham. Tibbs reached for the stack, then stopped and pushed the notes across to the clerk instead. "Ledger first," he said. "Every drum of hemp, every signature. The widows of the Mary Ellen are owed their wages."

Aske bolted for the door and got as far as the quay, where the morning tide was already slapping the stones. There he found the ledger's pages nailed to his own shop door with a playing card skewered through the middle. The spade was the ace, and beneath it someone had written seven, seven, seven in careful pencil. By dawn the rope on the quay had been cut out and replaced, and nobody in the Crown ever asked the cat where he'd learned to deal.