Black line tattoo of a cat with its tail curled up, with a trail of paw prints above it and one red heart pad, placed on the upper chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cat silhouette and paw prints on upper chest

Fine line · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A small black tattoo shows a cat in profile with its tail curling upwards, set beside a trail of paw prints that rise towards the collarbone. One paw print is filled with red, while the rest are solid black. The lines are smooth and clean against pale skin, and the design sits centrally on the upper chest with plenty of empty space around it.

Fine line Chest Cat Paw print Heart

Find an artist for this

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

The grey cat had come up from the river the winter before, and by the time of the Michaelmas wedding in Holloway Mere, the bakers' wives had decided it belonged to whoever fed it last. Nobody had fed it that morning. It sat on the lychgate with its tail curled up like a question mark and would not be moved.

Keep reading

Tomas laughed and lifted it down, and it leapt straight back onto the gatepost. When it jumped down again it walked the frosted path to the church door, and every print it left was black against the white. Agnes watched from the lane with her hand on her mother's arm. She went into the vestry to fetch the ring and pricked her thumb on the pin that held her veil. One drop fell on the last print the cat had made before the door.

The old women said the cat had walked the road for three weddings in that parish. Each time, the bride's blood had marked its path, and each marriage had held. Tomas asked Agnes what it meant. She said it meant she had bled for him first and would not be the one to leave.

They came out under the yew with the bells going, and the cat trailed them to the lane, its tail a dark hook above the snow. Tomas never saw it go. When the frost melted in March, the black prints had sunk into the mud, but the one red print still showed at the threshold, the only colour in the lane until spring.