Fine line black tattoo of a dog and a cat on the upper back, with the words always in my heart in script curving beneath them.

Dog and cat with script on the upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black outline tattoo of a dog's profile sits above a seated cat, with the words always in my heart written in a curved script beneath them. The linework is thin and even, with no shading or fill, and the ink is solid black. The design is centred on the upper back and fills most of the frame against a plain background.

Fine line Lettering Back Dog Cat Script Text Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat would not come down from the foresail the night the Marguerite lost her second anchor, so Old Ossian climbed up after her with a dish of salt herring and a lantern clamped to his belt. The dog, a rough-coated brindle called Bell, stood at the foot of the shrouds and barked until the whole watch was laughing at her.

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Nobody aboard had asked for either animal. The cat had come over the side at Lisbon in a cask of wine, and the dog had been bought from a fishwife for a shilling and a promise. By the Cape of Good Hope they slept in one heap by the galley stove, the cat's back against the dog's ribs, and the cook swore they had worked out a rota between them for who kept the warm side.

When the fever came in the Roaring Forties, Bell stopped eating. Ossian sat with her on the wet planks through three nights of grey sea. On the fourth morning she lifted her head towards the bow, as if she had heard a boat, and did not lift it again. The cat walked the length of the deck twice, then went and lay down where the dog's head had been.

They buried her at sea, wrapped in sailcloth with a ribbon of tarred twine. Ossian scratched the words onto a slate with a nail, because he did not trust himself to remember how the captain's daughter had spelled them, and fixed it above the galley door. Always in my heart. The cat ate from the dog's bowl for the rest of the voyage, and nobody moved it.