Close-up of a shaded grey tattoo on the upper back of a person with teal eyes, showing a grinning cat peering through a keyhole shape.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Grinning cat in a keyhole tattoo on upper back

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A keyhole-shaped tattoo shows a grinning cat's head peering out of the opening, with a wide toothy smile and bright teal eyes. The face and keyhole are rendered in soft grey shading with dark outlines, while the eyes carry the only colour. The image is a close, centred shot of the upper back and neck, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Back Keyhole Cat Cheshire cat Grin Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The door in the kitchen-garden wall had been painted shut so many times that its keyhole had become a rumour, a dark oval under the ivy that Mr Pargeter swore was only a knot in the brick. I cleared the ivy the April I took over the plot, mostly to spite him, and found the keyhole was real and that someone had been polishing the brass around it.

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I never had a key. The rector had one, or claimed he did, and the estate agent kept a drawer of old keys with paper tags written in a hand nobody could read. I tried a teaspoon, then a hairpin, then a bicycle clip from my late husband's coat, which fitted nothing but made me laugh until I had to sit down on the potting bench. That was when I noticed the cat.

It came each evening at dusk, first a grin, then teeth, then two green eyes sliding into the frame of the keyhole like someone peering round a curtain. It never spoke. It didn't need to. The grin said I was trying far too hard, and that a door like this opens for people who have already half forgotten they wanted to go through it.

So I stopped trying. I sowed sweet peas along the foot of the wall and let the bindweed have the path. By midsummer the peas had climbed the bricks and the door stood open a finger's width. Through the gap I saw a lawn the colour of old pennies, a table laid for tea, and one empty chair with its napkin already folded. The grin hung at the height of my knee, patient and pleased with itself. I took the hairpin from my hair, set it on the top step, and went in to put the kettle on.