Black and grey fine line tattoo of a cat with a curled tail and closed eyes, with three paw prints above it, on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line cat and paw prints on the back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A single continuous fine line drawing of a cat with closed, content eyes, whiskers and a tail that curls at the tip, with three small solid paw prints above it. The linework is thin and even, and the piece is shaded only in black ink on pale skin. The cat sits centrally on the back with open skin around it.

Fine line Back Cat Paw print Tail Whiskers

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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

Hush now, and mind the step by the well, because the frost there has gone soft and those are her prints you're treading near. Three of them, one behind another, going up the hill to where the birches give out. Don't go after them tonight. A cat asleep hears everything, and this one is always asleep.

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The charcoal burners called her Mossback, for she belonged to nobody, which is the only way a cat will belong to anyone. Every winter she walked the edge of the wood, and every winter she stopped beneath the oldest beech, curled her tail into a question mark, and closed her eyes as though the whole forest were a warm lap put out for her.

One year the miller's wife lost her wedding ring in the snow. The miller's son, Tobias, went out after it with a lantern, grumbling, because the wind had dropped and the stars were out and he was sure he would find nothing. Mossback was waiting at the beech. She looked at him, then at the roots, then at him again, and when he knelt and scraped away the snow, there was the ring, glinting like a small moon. He turned round to thank her, but she had already gone, leaving only her three prints going home.

So when the prints come up the hill in the morning, you leave the step unswept and you say nothing to the cat. And if you climb up to the mill door and look close at the stone where she likes to sit, you'll find one more print there, very small, pressed deep, which is how you know she was content to have been thanked for nothing at all.