Colour tattoo of the Cheshire Cat's grinning head on a forearm, with teal eyes, pink nose and ears, and soft grey shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cheshire Cat head on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the head of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, with a wide toothy grin, large teal eyes and pink nose and inner ears. The fur is rendered with soft grey shading and loose, feathered strokes of dark ink. The design is centred on a pale arm against a red top and a wooden floor.

Neo-trad Forearm Cheshire cat Cat Grin Teeth Eye Cartoon character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewes have been counted twice and still come up one short, and by the time you have fed the pigs the frost has got into the water trough and furred the lid of the feed bin white. Your father's old lantern hangs from the byre hook, the only thing in the yard that seems pleased to see you. Past the hay barn a cat is yowling at nothing, and you know the sound before you turn, because it has been in this farm's winters for as long as anyone has kept the ledger.

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You find the missing ewe in the bottom field, folded into the hedge where the blackthorn meets the ditch. She is alive and unbothered, chewing. Above her, in the bare branches, hangs a grin with no cat beneath it. Teeth first, then the wide eyes the colour of pond ice, then a pink nose like a bruised plum. You ask it, to be polite, which way the lane goes to the village. It tells you that depends entirely on where you mean to be going, and that most people who ask are already halfway there.

You walk the lane anyway. Every gate has a sheep standing exactly where a sheep should be, and each one turns to watch you with the same slow smile. By the church the grin has spread itself across the frozen pond where your reflection ought to be, and the ice has begun to groan. You understand that the cat wants you to wait for the thaw, a luxury no farmer in February has ever been granted.

So you go home. The lantern is still burning. On the kitchen table the ledger lies open, and in the margin beside the totals someone has drawn a neat row of small teeth. In the morning the count is correct, every ewe accounted for, and in the frosted yard a single pair of teal eyes watches you do the sums again, still smiling.