Colour tattoo of a cat reaching up towards a small butterfly, with blue and purple watercolour-style shading and a black outline, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat reaching for a butterfly on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A cat sits and stretches one front paw up towards a small butterfly above it, with its tail curling down the side. The linework is a thin black outline with soft blue and purple washes that fade across the body and tail, giving a loose watercolour effect. The tattoo sits on the side of the torso and is framed by bare skin and a hand at the right edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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The rain has not let up since Tuesday, so the market on Cutler Lane has turned to ponds. Mr Okonedo's awning sagged again this morning and tipped a bucket down my collar, which I took as a sign I should be somewhere drier. But I stayed, because Biscuit wouldn't come in from the wet, and you know how she is about her spot under the fishmonger's crates.

She was sitting on the bottom step when the butterfly came drifting through. Blue and purple, its wings soaked to the colour of a bruise going off, with no sense at all in weather like this. Biscuit stood up, stretched one paw towards it as though she had a plan, and the whole lane went quiet. The butterfly didn't land and didn't leave. It just hung above her in the drizzle, and she kept reaching, patient as a clockmaker.

I thought of the afternoon you tried to catch the swifts off the church roof with a colander. Forty minutes you were up that ladder. Your mother wanted to skin you.

In the end the butterfly floated off over the bread stall, and Biscuit gave the empty air a look of enormous dignity before going back to her crates. I've bought a tin of sardines and a new umbrella for us both. Come home for Sunday. Bring the colander.

Love, Nan

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