Colour tattoo of a grey cat beside a bowl of oranges and leaves on a thigh, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Grey cat and oranges on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A grey cat sits upright with its tail curled, one paw resting on the rim of a dark bowl heaped with orange fruit and red-orange leaves. The linework is bold, with soft blended shading on the fur and lighter highlights on the ears and muzzle. Colour is applied across the whole design against the pale skin, with the cat's grey body contrasting with the warm orange palette.

Neo-trad Thigh Cat Fruit Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Doreen had stopped shooing the cat off the cloakroom counter by the second Saturday. It sat on the ledge above the ticket bowl with its tail wrapped round its feet, watching the dancers through the glass as if it were booking the Palais for itself. Nobody knew whose it was. It came in with the damp off the seafront and left at the last waltz, and it had never been seen to eat anything but the oranges.

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The oranges were Doreen's one extravagance. Her brother sent a crate from a contact at the docks each month, and she heaped them in the dark blue bowl so the gentlemen would have something bright to look at while they waited for their coats. The cat would lift one grey paw to the rim, slow as a bishop, and rest it there like a claim. Nobody minded. The room was glad of colour after the blackout, and the fruit was for the room.

On the night the band played the slow numbers, a sailor came in with a girl's name pencilled on his cuff and no girl at his side. He asked for his coat, then for an orange. Doreen, who had waited three years for someone to ask her for anything, gave him one and said the cat would want the peel.

When the last waltz ended, the sailor came back and found Doreen still peeling a second orange over the counter. She split it in two and pushed one half across the wood. The cat watched them both from its ledge, paw on the rim of the bowl, and for once it reached for nothing at all.