Realistic tattoo of a Cheshire Cat grin with teal eyes peering through torn skin on the side of the ribs.

Cheshire Cat grin in torn skin on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A grinning cat with glowing teal eyes and rows of pale teeth peers out of a ragged tear in the skin, with the torn edges shaded in red and pink. The shading is smooth and realistic, with strong contrast between the black background and the bright eyes and teeth, which gives a three-dimensional effect. The tattoo is shown from the side on the ribs, with the frame filling most of the photo against a plain yellow-green wall.

Realism Ribs Cheshire cat Cat Eye Teeth Torn skin Grin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Thursday 14 December. Frost on the yard so thick the gate wouldn't swing, and Dad still isn't back from the sale at Ludlow. I've been feeding the bullocks on my own since six.

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The tear in the lean-to wall opened again last night, the one Dad patched with old tin from the Lower Field gate. I took the torch out to check the ewes and the beam found the split first: ragged edges in the dark boards, and behind them two eyes the green of wet bottle glass. Then the grin came, teeth in rows like a comb, and I swear the grin arrived before the cat did. I said good evening, because Mum always said you greet anything in the barn after dark. It didn't answer. It only kept grinning, the way you'd grin at someone who has just lost a bet.

Friday. Counted the hens. Twelve, not thirteen, and the speckled one hasn't come back from the hedge. There was one feather on the back step. The grin was still there this morning, fainter, as if the cold had got into the wood and made it sulk. I left a saucer of milk on the step and went in for my tea. When I came back the saucer was empty and the tin had been nailed flat over the hole, neat as a letter, with no gap left at all.

Saturday. Dad home from Ludlow with a cold and no bullocks sold. He ran his hand over the new tin and said he'd nailed nothing there. Then he saw the frost on the step, where someone had scratched a row of small, neat teeth, and he went very quiet and said, to nobody in particular, that the cat would want its milk warm.