Ginger tabby cat portrait tattoo

You will think I have lost my wits, but the cat has finally been given a name, and not one I would have chosen. Prior Hubert calls him Sinner, having found him asleep on the Lenten psalter, but the kitchen boys call him Marmalade and that has stuck. He is the colour of the tallow candles we ration in February, striped down the forehead as if someone had raked him with a comb, and he has yellow-green eyes like unripe pears.

He came in from the rain in October and chose my desk, which I took as a comment on my penmanship. He sits on the corner of the lectern where the ink pots stand warm against the brazier, and he watches my pen the way the novices watch the cellarer counting coins. When I ruled the lines for the Gospel of Saint John he walked straight across the vellum, leaving four small prints the size of a fingernail, each with its claws drawn out in a little fan of ochre. Hubert wanted the sheet scraped. I told him a page could be scraped but a cat could not be unwalked, and for once he had no answer.

So the page stays. I have set the words around the marks, and it is the most honest leaf in the book. Last night the snow came sideways through the cloister and the cat sat on the closed volume with his tail folded round his feet, purring so hard the desk trembled under the lamp. I did not move him. I finished the verse about the light shining in the darkness by his breathing alone.

Your loving brother in the work, Anselm