Realistic colour tattoo of a calico cat portrait inside an orange scrollwork frame on a calf, with partial black lettering above.

Cat portrait with scrollwork on a calf

Realism · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A calico cat is shown head and shoulders, facing slightly left, with orange, black and cream fur rendered in soft shading. Fine fur strokes and highlights in the eyes give it a photographic finish. Below the cat, an orange and gold scrollwork frame curls around the base of the portrait, and part of a black lettering piece sits above it on the leg.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pull your chair nearer, the lamp can wait ten minutes, the wick's trimmed and the oil's warm. You want to hear about Marmalade? Three colours she had, like someone tried to paint a sunset on a teacup and gave up halfway. Orange over one ear, black across the other like a struck match, and cream down her chest that the gulls took for surrender. She came ashore in a crate of potatoes the spring of '61, and by autumn she had ruled the rock.

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The winter that matters was the one the lens cracked. Ice split the glass in the lantern room and Alwyn Price went down to the store for a spare pane, leaving the door on the latch. Marmalade was up the iron stair before anyone thought to stop her. When I climbed after her with a torch I found her sitting square on the brass pedestal, tail wrapped neat round her feet, staring out at the black water where the Maud Eileen was running blind toward the reef.

I had no lamp I trusted, so I did the only thing a daft old man could do. I stood beside her and held the torch steady on her face. Those eyes, gold as the scrollwork Alwyn had carved round the frame years before, caught every scrap of light and threw it back over the sea. The skipper told the inquiry he steered on two bright points in the dark and a stubborn cat that would not budge.

She lived to nineteen and we buried her under the brass. Mind the step on your way out. She never liked folk who forgot to say goodnight to the light.

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