Black and grey traditional tattoo of a seated Egyptian-style cat with a sunburst and crescent moon behind its head, on a forearm.

Egyptian cat with sunburst on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A seated cat wearing a beaded collar faces left in front of a sunburst and crescent moon. Bold outlines and smooth grey shading fill the body, with small stars, a pyramid and a sun on its flank, and teardrop shapes hanging below. The design is shown in black and grey ink against pale skin and a dark background.

Traditional Forearm Cat Sunburst Moon Pyramid Star Collar Bead Teardrop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Abernethy had kept the boarding house at the end of Gull Row for thirty-one years and had never once let a cat over the step. So when the lodger from number nine came up the path carrying a black cat in a fish crate, she stood in the hall with her arms folded and waited for him to explain himself.

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"She was sat on the harbour wall at first light," he said, "facing the water as if she was waiting on a boat. Nobody came for her."

The cat walked past Mrs Abernethy's slippers as though they were furniture, went into the front parlour, and settled before the cold grate with her tail wrapped round her feet. Her collar was a band of painted beads that would not come off however hard Mrs Abernethy tugged. Through the window the sun was lifting over the Ness in a hard white ring, and the cat turned her head to follow it up.

That week the herring boats came in early and the fog lifted off the bay in a way the old men said they had not seen since the war. Every evening the cat sat at the parlour window and watched the lamps come on along the front, and every evening the lodger swore there was one more than the night before. On the seventh night a small gold star lay in the dust of the sill, though nothing had been dusted there in years, and the cat had gone.

Mrs Abernethy went down to the wall the next morning with a saucer of milk she did not expect to need. The stone was dry. Only a drop of seawater had dried on the top step in the shape of a teardrop, and she left it there.