Neo-traditional colour tattoo of an anthropomorphic ginger cat in a green top hat, monocle and green coat, set within an ornate gold frame on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dapper cat in top hat and monocle on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A dapper ginger cat wears a green top hat with a purple feather, a monocle and a green coat with a purple cravat, framed by an ornate gold scrollwork border. The linework is bold and dark, with painterly shading on the fur, coat and frame. Soft blue and green tones fill the background behind the figure, which is centred in the composition.

Neo-trad Upper arm Cat Top hat Monocle Frame Feather

Find an artist for this

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

Mr Pell has hung the portrait above the counter of his pawnshop on Tanners Row for eleven years, and in all that time nobody has asked who the cat is. You have asked, of course. You are fourteen, you sweep the floor on Saturdays for threepence, and you have decided the animal in the gilt frame is a magistrate in disguise, because it looks down at the customers with the same weary disapproval as the magistrate who fined your father for taking pheasants.

Keep reading

The monocle is the thing. Mr Pell says the painter gave it to him in settlement of a bad debt, along with the top hat, whose purple feather has been replaced twice since the war because the moths kept at it. On Thursdays, when the rain comes sideways off the moor, you polish the glass with vinegar and an old shirt and tell the cat your troubles: the grammar school has written to your mother again, and the boots you were given are two sizes too big and stuffed with newspaper.

In March a woman comes in with a silver christening mug and a face like she has been up all night. She wants two pounds for it. Then she asks whether Mr Pell will take the cat as well, as security, since she has nothing else of worth. He laughs, then stops laughing. You watch his hand move towards the frame and hover there. The cat stares past all of you with one green eye and one dark, as if it has heard this sort of request before.

Mr Pell gives her three pounds for the mug and says nothing about the cat. When she has gone he lifts the portrait down and turns it over. On the back of the board, in pencil, someone has written: Hold for Miss Ada Fenn. She will come back for him when the feather is green. You look at the cat, which looks at you, and you decide you will be the one to wipe its monocle every Thursday until she does.