Tattoo of a Cheshire Cat grin with bright green eyes and a pink nose on the upper back near the shoulder blade, shaded in black and grey.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cheshire Cat grin on a shoulder blade

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The tattoo shows a wide, toothy Cheshire Cat smile with two glossy green cat eyes above it and a small pink nose at the centre. The grin and teeth are shaded in black and grey with soft highlights, giving the mouth and eyes a three-dimensional look. The design sits on the upper back, centred in the frame against plain skin.

Back Cheshire cat Grin Smile Cat Teeth

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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

You have come up the Sallow Pass in the wrong month, and the carter at the last inn told you so, but you laughed and paid for the mule anyway. Now the cloud has come down over the switchbacks, the mule has stopped dead at a bend with its ears flat, and you cannot see your own boots.

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Then the grin arrives first. Nothing else of it is there, only a white crescent hanging in the grey at the height of your chest, rows of small teeth catching what little light there is. Your grandmother's voice comes back to you, the one that said a cat's smile outlasts the cat. You wish it good evening, because she taught you that too, and the teeth widen.

Eyes follow, two green lamps sliding out of the murk above the mouth, slow and deliberate. A nose the colour of a cut plum settles between them. The mule starts forward on its own, as if it knows the road better than you do, and the grin drifts ahead of you, always exactly as far as the next bend.

At the top of the pass the cloud tears open. The cat is gone, and so is the mule, which is standing in the shelter hut with its saddle off, chewing hay as though it never left. A painted board hangs by the stove with a grin on it, and beneath it someone has scratched a line in charcoal: pay the cat its due and it will show you the way down. You never learned who wrote it. You only know that the bridle hangs on the wrong peg now, and that no matter which way you lead the mule, it turns back towards the bend.