Japanese-style tattoo of a cat face with yellow eyes, black and grey markings and a red rope beneath it, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat mask with rope on thigh

Japanese · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A cat's face is shown in the centre, with several smaller cat heads layered around it and yellow eyes set in the main face. The black and grey markings on the white fur include dark patches with red dots, and a red twisted rope runs along the bottom. The shading is smooth and the colours are bold against the pale skin, with the design filling most of the frame.

Japanese Thigh Cat Rope Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair came into Harrowby the week after the hay was in, and with it came the cat booth, though nobody ever saw a woman in it. There was only the mask. It hung on a nail behind a curtain of faded red silk, a face of white fur with yellow eyes, and smaller faces crowded round it like kittens round a saucer of milk. A length of red cord was knotted under its chin, and the showman, a thin man called Ezra Boyle, never let anyone touch the knot.

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A boy named Walter Tuck paid his penny to look, and for a week he came back every evening. On the seventh night he asked Ezra why the cord was tied so tight. Ezra was quiet a long while, then said the cats were not all of one mind, and the knot was all that kept them from wandering off to their old homes, where they had done a great deal of mischief. The dark patches on the fur, he said, were lives already spent. Each one bore a red dot where an eye had been.

Walter laughed and asked what would happen if the rope came loose. Ezra said nothing would happen for a while. Then the fair packed up and moved on, and the cats went looking for whoever had let them out.

That night Walter lifted the cord from its nail and carried the mask out past the last caravan. He untied the knot, and the cats woke to the cold and scattered across the stubble like spilt marbles. Only the yellow eyes stayed on his hands, and he sat in the frost with the loose rope until the fair lamps went out one by one.