Traditional style tattoo of a crescent moon with a face and a black cat sitting on it, with orange stars, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crescent moon and black cat on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A crescent moon with a stylised human face in profile sits on the forearm, with a solid black cat perched on its lower curve facing the moon's face. Three orange four-pointed stars surround the moon, and the moon and cat are outlined in bold black linework with grey shading on the moon. The image is a close, straight-on view of the forearm against a blurred brick wall and dark clothing.

Traditional Forearm Moon Crescent moon Cat Black cat Star Face

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp-keeper's cat, Ash, climbed the harbour tower each night at the turn of the tide, because from its top she could see the moon lying on the water like a thrown bridle. The moon had a long, sorrowful face and a mouth that never quite closed, and she had been alone in the sky since the gods hung her there to tell the sailors when to row.

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One night the moon leaned down, her edge bright as a sickle, and asked why the cat always looked up instead of out at the sea. Ash said the sea had its own company, all those fish and drowned men, but nobody sat with the moon. The moon thought about this for a long while. Then she bent her lower curve so far that it rested on the tower rail, and the cat stepped on, tail curled round her paws like a rope on a bollard.

They kept each other through the seasons. Embers from the potters' kilns rose and became the three bright stars that followed them, glowing like iron in a forge. When the cat grew heavy with age, the moon thinned to hold her, and the fishermen of Oriel swore the moon had lost weight that winter. The lamp-keeper's grandson climbed the tower to scold the cat down, and found her sitting so still that he thought she was asleep.

He never did pull her down. Some nights, if you row out past the breakwater and look back, the moon still bends low over the harbour, and a dark shape sits on her lower horn, waiting for the tide to turn.