Neo-traditional tattoo of a grey Egyptian-style cat with a gold cobra, gold collar and orange eyes, covering a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Egyptian cat and cobra on a back

Neo-trad · Back · Mixed · Photo

A stylised cat wearing a beaded gold collar and earring dominates the image, with a gold cobra coiled over its head. Bold black outlines and smooth grey shading define the cat's face, while orange eyes and yellow and red accents add colour. A large yellow and red flower with a fan-shaped petal design sits below and to the left, filling the composition across the upper back.

Neo-trad Back Cat Snake Flower Collar Jewellery Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I'm writing this at the staff table because I can't sleep in the flat after what happened at the museum last night. I was logging the Egyptian gallery after the school party had gone, counting the bronze things twice because Mr Pryce insists on it, and I found the case of the cat goddess standing open with its glass lid propped on a brick.

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The collar was gone. There was only a faint dent in the dust where the beads had lain for a hundred years. Pryce swore he'd sold nothing and the insurers would want a name for it, so I walked the galleries with the torch while the amber eyes of every feline figure followed me across the room. I told myself that is what glaze is made to do. Then I found the collar in the cabinet across the hall, laid out neatly on the lotus tray, every bead still warm from somewhere.

I should have rung someone. Instead I put it back, and this morning a woman in a grey coat stood at that case for an hour without moving. When she finally turned to me she didn't ask about the cat. She asked what the little gold snake on its brow was called. I said it was a cobra, a royal one, and she smiled as though I'd given her the wrong answer on purpose. Then she tapped the glass twice, the way you'd knock for a friend to let you in.

The case is empty again. The cat is gone and so is the woman. Only the snake is left on the sill of the staff kitchen, coiled in the warm light from the ovens, watching the door. Come up on the early train if you can. Bring your sharpest pencil.