Two panels show a cat portrait tattooed on a forearm: a purple linework sketch on the left and a realistic black and grey version on the right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat portrait on a forearm, sketch and finished

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The image is split into two panels showing a cat's head and shoulders in profile, looking up and to the left. The left panel shows loose purple linework with sketchy hatching and visible whiskers, while the right panel shows a finished, soft-shaded black and grey portrait with detailed fur, eyes and whiskers. Both versions sit on the forearm against a plain background.

Realism Forearm Cat Animal Portrait Whiskers

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the cat on the fourth-floor landing of Ashgrove House, sitting in the square of grey light the stairwell window throws, and she does not move when you kneel. She is a brown tabby with a torn left ear and the look of someone expecting a different visitor. Flat 9 has been locked since Tuesday, and the council number on the notice has been ringing out ever since.

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You carry her down to the bin store anyway, because the lift is broken and the rain has started. Nobody on the ground floor claims her. You sit on the low wall with a sleeve of cream crackers and she eats one, then looks past your shoulder, up the block, to a window on nine that stays lit at all hours. You start drawing her on the back of a parking leaflet with a purple biro, whiskers first, because they are the hardest part to keep from turning into rain.

Three weeks later the drawing is pinned above the bin store door and the cat is asleep on your coat in the flat above the chippy you rent. The lit window belonged to Mrs Okafor's son, who came down with a box of tins and a spare key. His mother had gone into a home in Chesterfield, and the cat had never liked the lift. He had seen your drawing on the noticeboard and asked whether you could make it bigger.

You take the biro lines to a proper page and then to a real forearm, and the fur comes slowly, grey on grey, one hair at a time, until the cat looks up and to the left the way she did from the wall, toward a window that is finally dark. In the finished version the stairwell light is still there behind her, soft as breath on glass. She has stopped waiting. You, a little, have not.