Realistic black and grey Cheshire Cat with teal eyes and black branches tattooed on the inside of an upper arm.

Cheshire Cat with branches on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large realistic tattoo of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, grinning with teal eyes, curled over a dark branch. Black and grey shading gives the fur soft, detailed texture, with bold black branches framing the design. The tattoo fills most of the frame on a bare arm against a white paper towel.

Realism Upper arm Cheshire cat Cat Branches Grin Alice in wonderland

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been told the cat is a liar, which is the first thing everyone tells you about the grey cat that lives in Mulberry Wood above Qwillingham. The second thing they tell you is never to ask it the way to the palace. You ask anyway. The sun is sinking behind the orchard wall, your basket of hedge-sloes is heavy, and the path has forked three times since noon.

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The cat is curled along a crooked bough like a dropped scarf, its tail hanging over the moss. Only the grin is fully there. The rest of it fades into the bark as though the branch were made from its shadow. Its eyes are a cold green-blue, the colour of the glass bottles the apothecary keeps on his high shelf, and they follow you the way a magpie follows a dropped ring.

'The palace,' it says, 'is on the far side of you. It was always on the far side of you. Where else would the Queen hang her mirrors?'

You laugh, because it is clearly a joke, and the grin widens until it is all teeth and no cat. Then it says, 'Mind the basket.' Before you can ask why, the sloes are rolling down the slope, and each one turns into a small gold coin and vanishes into the leaves.

You walk home the long way, which is the only way home has ever been. At the orchard gate your mother is waiting, smiling the same wide smile, and you cannot tell, even now, which of you has come back.