Black linework tattoo of a walking cat built from circles and straight lines, on the inner forearm.

Geometric walking cat on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a cat in profile, striding to the right with its tail raised. Its body is outlined in a single black line and filled with overlapping circles and straight lines that suggest joints and structure. The design is in black ink on pale skin against a dark background, with a plain, uncluttered composition centred on the forearm.

Geometric Forearm Cat Circle Geometric line Animal Line art

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The keep at Carrick Hollin is worse than the survey said. Half the north range has gone into the moat, and the bailiff won't let me past the postern without a hard hat he has never once worn himself. I have spent three days with the compass and the rule, pinning the old drawings to a board in the chapel, because the chapel roof is the only part still keeping the rain out.

Yesterday, when the wind dropped, a cat came along the wall walk. Grey, lean, tail up like a question mark. It stopped at the broken arch and looked at me the way a foreman looks at a late delivery. I didn't sketch it at first. I was too busy trying to make the tower circles agree with the sightlines. Then the cat walked, and every joint of it fell into place: the shoulder a circle, the hip a circle, the ribs strung along one straight line. I had been drawing the castle wrong for a week. The towers were never squares. They were wheels set on a shaft, and something had once been meant to turn them.

Last night I drew the cat in one unbroken line, the way the old masons struck out a vault, then filled it with circles where the joints should be. It looks absurd. It also looks as if it knows the way out. I have not told the bailiff.

This morning the wall walk was empty, but a neat set of prints ran through the mortar dust to the sea gate, each one a small, exact circle. I measured the stride. It was precisely the length of my own.

Yours, Ada