Black line drawing of five cats in different stretching and rolling poses, stacked vertically down the outer lower leg, in a fine line sketch style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Five cats in a stretching sequence on a leg

Fine line · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Five cats are drawn one above another in poses that step through a stretch, from a cat rolling on its back at the top to a cat arching with its tail raised at the bottom. The linework is black and fairly fine, with light shading on the bodies and tails. The design is shown in colour-free ink against pale skin, with a patterned rug and a grey sofa visible in the background.

Fine line Calf Cat Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hens were still shut in their house when Dad rolled the tractor out of the yard, so the cats had the whole cold morning to themselves. Five of them lay along the top of the byre wall like a row of wet washing, and I watched them come down one at a time, each stretch pulling the next one out of sleep.

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Ruby went first, flipping onto her back in the frost-stiff straw and paddling at nothing. Then Tom, the ginger one nobody could catch, folded himself over the gate hinge and arched until his spine looked like a question mark. Pepper and Grey followed, bellies low, tails lifting like pump handles, and last of all came old Bess, who had lost an ear to a fox years back. She pushed her back end up into the air and held it there as if the whole day had been arranged for her.

I had come out for the egg basket and stayed on the step with my hands in my pockets. Nobody had ever told me cats did this in order. Gran always said they only stretched like that when the weather was about to turn, to be ready for whatever came. I had thought it was just fussing. Bess looked over at me with narrowed eyes, and I swear she was waiting for me to copy her.

So I did. Mud cracked at my knees, the cold got into my shoulders, and for a moment the five of us stood in the yard in the same long shape until Dad shouted from the field gate that the feed would not carry itself. When I looked up again the cats had gone. Only the basket and the steam from my breath were left.