Black ink tattoo of a grinning cat with green eyes, its striped tail curling into a large spiral, on the upper back in a Blackwork style.

Grinning cat and spiral tail on upper back

Blackwork · Back · Mixed · Photo

A grinning cat with green-filled eyes sits at the top of the design, with its striped tail curling down into a large spiral that tapers to a tight centre. The linework is bold and solid black with no shading, and the tail stripes are filled as segments. The green eyes are the only colour in an otherwise black design, photographed against plain pale skin on the upper back.

Blackwork Back Cat Grin Spiral Swirl Tail Stripe Green eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pryce counted the stairs every morning because the number changed when she was not looking. A hundred and twelve, she would say, and then, from the gallery rail, a hundred and thirteen. The cat knew. Marrow sat on the third landing with his tail wound round the iron spindle, grinning at the drop as though he had arranged it.

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Nobody on Gull Stack had ever seen him eat. He came up from the rocks each dusk with his coat salted and his green eyes lit like two small lamps, and by then the lamp room was already warm from the paraffin. Mrs Pryce polished the great lens while he watched from the sill, his striped tail sweeping slow circles in the dust.

The storm came in on the ninth of October with a sea like slate. The mainland boats had been called in and the bell buoy had gone under. At midnight the lamp guttered and she climbed, one hundred and twelve steps, and at the top the glass was black and the wick would not catch. Marrow was there ahead of her, sitting square on the lens housing, grinning at the dark.

She found the match tin in her apron. He leaned his head toward the wick and she struck the match, and the flame came up green at the edges, the way it had not in forty years. Out on the water a trawler turned its bow toward the light. Marrow's grin widened until it was all teeth and no cat, and then he was gone, and so, she noticed later, was the hundred and thirteenth step.