Black and grey cat tattoo sitting on a ball of yarn on the thigh, drawn in bold outline with stippled dotwork shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat on a ball of yarn on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A stylised cat with striped markings sits on top of a ball of yarn, drawn in bold black outline with simple shapes. Fine stippled dots fill the cat's body, and hatched lines give the yarn texture. Other black ink designs, including a ship and a partial outline, appear around the cat on the same thigh.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuppence had been claiming the galley hatch for three weeks before the mate decided she had to go. "She's eaten the last of the herring and half the ship's rope," Mr Haddow said, holding up a tangle of hemp that looked as though it had been through a mangle. Cook only shrugged and handed over the ball of grey wool his sister had knitted for the voyage, the one he had been saving for socks.

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The cat never let it out of her sight. She sat on it through gales, one striped paw resting on the top like a captain over a chart, and when the mate threatened the wool with a bucket of salt water she simply stared at him until he went below. Nobody could say how she knew the fog was coming, but on the sixth night she rose, stretched, and pushed the ball with her nose until it rolled off the hatch and across the wet deck.

The wool unspooled behind it, thread after thread, over the rail and into the dark. Haddow followed it with the lantern because the sailors would not, and found the line running taut towards the bow, then the bow lifting towards a faint orange glow that had been missing from the chart for two days. It was the lighthouse at Skerry Point, swinging in and out of the murk.

By dawn the Mabel Ruth was tied up at the quay, and the wool was wound neatly back on its ball, a little thinner than before. Tuppence sat on top of it, looking very pleased with herself, and nobody thought to take it away from her again.

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