Black ink pen sketch of a dotwork cat creature with a leaf above and a lotus flower below, drawn on a sketchbook page.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork cat with leaf and lotus design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A cat-like creature with pointed ears and wide eyes sits at the centre of the drawing, with a leaf shape above and a lotus-style flower below. The body is shaded with stippled dots that fade toward the top, while the flower and leaf are filled with bold outlines and simple petal patterns. The design is shown in black ink on cream paper, with a pen and a pencil case at the top edge of the frame.

Dotwork Cat Creature Leaf Lotus Flower Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the creature on the eleventh floor, sitting in the planter outside flat 114 where the council never let anyone grow anything but nettles. It has pointed ears like folded envelopes and eyes that look surprised by everything, including you. Mrs Okafor from 109 swears it belongs to nobody, that it arrived the week the lift broke and has never once asked for a tin of anything.

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Between the two of you, you decide it likes the lotus. You have been carrying a jam jar of water up the stairwell for a fortnight because the tap in the bin store runs brown, and the flower that opened on the dead geranium pot is the only colour left on the estate. On Tuesday evening you set the jar down and the creature leans in, dots of shadow gathering along its flank like rain starting on a windscreen. A leaf comes loose from the sill, turns over in the air and lands neatly on the lip of the jar, as if someone had asked it to.

The lift is fixed on Thursday. Men in hi-vis arrive with a van and a clipboard and say the block will be repainted by spring, grey to a shade they call heritage green. You stand at the window and watch them tape off the walkway. When you look back, the planter is empty except for the lotus, folded tight, its petals drawn in lines as black and neat as stitches.

Downstairs the caretaker says there has never been a cat in the building. You go back up anyway, the stairs smelling of bleach and somebody's fried onions, and you leave the jar on the sill. In the morning the water is gone and a single leaf sits in its place, pointing at the sky, as though it has been waiting for you to notice what you have been carrying up all this time.