Black and grey realism tattoos of cats with ornamental scrollwork and a tower on two forearms, with script lettering above the wrists.

Cats, scrollwork and tower on two forearms

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows two forearms with black and grey tattoos. Realistic cat portraits with finely shaded fur sit on each forearm, with a crescent moon, flowers, white ornamental scrollwork and a small tower or church on the hand. The shading uses dense dotted texture in the background, and the composition is tightly framed against a dark backdrop.

Realism Dotwork Forearm Hand Cat Crescent moon Flower Tower Lettering Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The dance hall at Haverlow stood on the wrong side of the river, and every Saturday the cats came down from the church steps to watch the fiddlers. Nobody in the village said so out loud. Old Mabel Tennant kept a saucer of milk by her back door for the grey one with the white ruff, and she swore it was the same cat her mother had fed, though her mother had been dead thirty years.

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One autumn the fiddler, a thin man called Ned Rooke, took the saucer for a joke and drank the milk himself. That night the moon came up crooked over the tower of St Ebba's and he could not sleep. He went out into the lane and found the grey cat sitting in the middle of the road with its tail wrapped around its feet, waiting for him as if it had been there since dusk.

"You owe me a saucer," it said, in a voice like a door hinge. "And a tune."

Ned had no tune left in him that week, so he played the only one he knew, badly, on the bridge. The cat listened with its eyes half shut. When he finished it stood, stretched, and walked up the church path ahead of him, and at the top of the steps the flowers in the churchyard had all opened, though it was November.

Ned kept the milk saucer full after that, and the fiddle went back to the hall. Mabel said the cat had taken him for his debt, and perhaps it had, but the village noticed the music was sweeter every Saturday, and nobody asked which of them was playing it.