Black and grey dotwork and fine line tattoo of a curled cat with a long solid tail on the inner ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Curled cat on an ankle

Dotwork · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A cat curls head-down in a loop, with its tail trailing off to the lower right. The outline is a fine single line, and the body is filled with stippled dots that build soft shading toward the head, while the tail is a solid black stroke. The tattoo sits on the ankle against a plain pale skin background with a dark backdrop at the top of the frame.

Dotwork Fine line Ankle Cat Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The cat has taken to sleeping the way Mam used to fold the good tablecloth, nose tucked under her own haunch, the whole length of her wound into a ring on the flagstones by the stove. Father says it is a sign of weather. He says it every morning now, though the glass has been steady for a week and the gulls are sitting on the slipway as if they have nowhere better to be. I have stopped arguing with him about it.

Her tail is the only part of her that will not curl. It runs out across the floor in one black stroke, past the coal scuttle and under the table, and when she moves in her sleep it twitches like a line someone is still drawing. I once tried to follow it to its end. It went under the dresser, up the back of the chair, and I lost it in the dark beside the boxes of Mam's things that we have not yet had the heart to open.

Yesterday the ferry did not come. Mr Dunlop walked up from the harbour to say so, soaked to the knees, and he stood in the kitchen dripping while the cat watched him with one half-closed eye from inside her circle. He asked whether we had any news from the mainland. I said no. He said the wireless had gone quiet too.

I think she knows something. This morning she had uncurled and was sitting at the window with her tail wrapped neatly round her feet, and the sea was the colour of slate and perfectly still. I have been counting the boats that haven't come back. Come home soon, or write, whichever comes first.

Love, Nell