Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a cat's head in profile on the inner forearm of a person wearing a dark floral top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat portrait on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a cat's head turned slightly to one side, with its ears, eyes and whiskers rendered in detail. The shading is built from stippled dots and fine lines, giving soft tonal changes across the fur and face. The ink is entirely black and grey against pale skin, and the cat is centred on the forearm with a plain pale wall behind.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nan Harker kept the grey cat on the harbour wall because the cat would not be kept anywhere else. It arrived the winter the Mary Joan went down off the Skerries, sat on the bollard by her step, and watched the bay with eyes like two pale coins until the tide turned. Nobody claimed it. The fishermen called it Pilot, because it always seemed to know which boat was late.

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Every evening Nan carried out a saucer of herring heads and set it on the wall. The cat ate without looking down. It kept its head turned a little to one side, towards the mouth of the harbour where the light went out over the water. When the wind came from the north, its fur lifted the way sea grass does, and the salt crusted in its whiskers so they glittered like wire.

In the fourth spring the cat stopped coming to the saucer. Nan walked the quay calling for it, past the net lofts and the chandler's, until young Tomas Reid came running with his coat open and said it was out on the breakwater, sitting in the spray with its face to the bar. The Gwen Ashby was two hours overdue.

Nan took the saucer out in the dark and set it down on the wall beside the cat. Neither of them moved. Just after midnight the lamps came round the point, low and steady, and the crew found their way in by the light in her window. The cat rose, stretched, and walked home along the wall without once looking back at the sea.

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