Black and grey realism tattoo of a cat's face above a sleeping cat, with clouds behind them, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat portrait and sleeping cat on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A cat's face with narrowed eyes and long whiskers fills the upper panel, set against dark clouds. Below it, a smaller sleeping cat is curled in a separate panel, both rendered with soft shading and fine fur detail. The work is in black and grey only, shown on a forearm against a plastic-wrapped background.

Realism Forearm Cat Sleeping cat Cloud Animal portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Matins had rung twice before Brother Anselm noticed the grey cat on the lectern, sitting square on the Psalter where the ink was still wet. Her eyes narrowed at him as though he were the trespasser. The abbot had said she would go in spring. Spring had come anyway, and so had the mice, and the vellum was being nibbled at the edges.

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He lifted her down expecting claws, and found her heavier than she looked, the fur at her throat thick with cold. She twisted towards the stairs that led down to the wine store, and he followed her with the lamp. Under the barrels, on a folded sack of barley, a second cat lay asleep with one paw tucked beneath her chin. Anselm had not known there was a kitten. He had not known how many nights the grey cat had been carrying her kills up to the scriptorium, or why she never ate them there.

He went to Abbot Hildred before the bell. The old man listened with his hands in his sleeves, then asked how many pages the mice had spoiled. "None," Anselm said. "She has kept them off the vellum all winter. I only ever saw the hunting, never the reason for it." Hildred was quiet for a long while. Then he sent for a basket and an old woollen blanket from the infirmary.

By vespers the grey cat slept in the basket beside the stove, and the kitten dozed against her flank in the warm, while outside the clouds slid over the bell tower like slow ships. Anselm copied the Compline hymn once more, carefully, and set the cat's paw print in the margin of the page, small and dry, where no one would think to erase it.