Black ink tattoo of the grinning Cheshire Cat with a striped tail on the upper back near the left shoulder blade, in a simple graphic style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cheshire Cat tattoo on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the Cheshire Cat with a wide toothy grin, narrow eyes and pointed ears, with its striped tail curling across the skin. It is drawn in solid black shapes and bold lines with no shading or colour. The photo is taken from behind, showing the tattoo on a bare shoulder against a black and grey striped top.

Shoulder Cheshire cat Cat Smile Stripe Tail

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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

Now sit down, the lot of you, and mind the lamp, because this is the bit my grandfather always told with his hand on the rail. The barque Sorrel was four months out of Gravesend, and the only creature aboard who wasn't on the books was a striped tom called Mr Pennywhistle. Nobody had shipped him. He had simply come up the gangway one grey morning off the Thames and taken the best place by the galley stove, and the cook, who was superstitious as a bishop, decided that a cat which chose you was a cat you kept.

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Off the Horn the cook began to notice the tom sitting in the rigging where no cat could sit, and the men started to say the animal had the look of a fellow who knew something. Then one night in the middle watch, Jem Harrow, who had the wheel, swore blind he saw nothing but a grin hanging in the air above the binnacle. Teeth first, he said, and then the narrow eyes, and then the rest of the cat came back in pieces, the striped tail last of all, curling round the compass like a rope round a bollard.

Jem kept the course. He always said that was the thing. In the morning the tom was asleep on the coil by the galley, striped and dull as a bag of rope, and the cook gave him a fish head for his trouble.

So when they tell you the sea is full of ghosts, remember that the one that matters was smiling. And if you ever find a grin in your own reflection on a dark passage, do as Jem did and hold the wheel steady.