Geometric cat head tattoo with dotwork shading and watercolour splashes of pink, purple and teal on an upper arm.

Geometric cat head on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A cat's head is built from black outlined triangles and facets, with green eyes and a stippled dotwork texture on the shaded planes. Loose watercolour-style washes in pink, purple and teal sit behind and around the design, bleeding past its outline. The tattoo is centred on the upper arm and fills most of the frame against a blurred indoor background.

Geometric Dotwork Upper arm Cat Cat head Geometric Watercolour Green eye Triangle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The winter the Harrow beck froze to the bottom, old Tam Ferrier's barn cat was the only creature on the farm who did not complain about the cold. She was grey as a slate roof and cut in planes like one, and when she sat in the byre doorway the frost could not decide where her edges were. The children called her Shard. Tam called her nothing at all, which the cat seemed to prefer.

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That January the grain ran low and the mice came in from the stubble in their hundreds, bold as deacons. Tam's wife set traps and cursed them. Shard did not hunt. She sat on the lintel with her green eyes half shut and watched the snow fall past the lamp, and every night a little more of the feed was left whole in the bins. Nobody asked her why. Folk who keep cats learn not to.

On the last night of the month Tam went out with the lantern and found her on the frozen trough, her head turned east, where no sun would rise for hours. Ice had crept along the water like lace. "What do you want?" he asked. She got down, walked to the gate and waited. He followed her across the white field to the old hedge, where the blackthorn had started to bud in the dark, pink and violet at the tips, as if someone had flicked paint across the bare wood.

He understood then. The mice had not come for the grain. They had come because the thaw was already moving under the ground and the mice knew it before any man did. Shard had only been keeping the house until spring could find its way back. By morning the beck was running again, loud and blue, and Tam left the barn door open for her. She never once looked back at it.