Neo-traditional tattoo of a hairless cat's head with orange and grey shading and a yellow eye, set in orange and black swirls on the back of a hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hairless cat on the back of a hand

Neo-trad · Hand · Colour · Photo

A hairless cat's head in profile sits at the centre of the design, with a yellow eye, pointed ears and grey shading over the face. Orange fills the ears, the background flourishes and a round pendant-like ornament below the chin, all outlined in bold black linework. The tattoo sits on the back of the hand and fills most of the frame against a dark background.

Neo-trad Hand Cat Swirl Ornament Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Marigold had been four days out of Hull when the cook found the cat asleep inside the copper pot, and nobody could agree on where it had come from. Ada Pell said it had come aboard at Rotterdam with the sacks of barley, tucked inside a deckhand's coat, and that she would not be the one to put it over the side for being ugly. Its skin was grey and warm as new bread, and it had a way of sitting on the galley range that made the men take their dinners up on deck rather than argue.

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On the fifth night the sea came green over the bow and the cargo shifted in the hold with a noise like furniture falling down stairs. Ada was rolling pastry when the cat went stiff on the table, ears flat, one yellow eye fixed on the stove. A thread of paraffin was dripping from a cracked can onto the hot plate. She had the can off and the stove door open to the spray before the second mate even knew she had moved, and the cat sat on the sill washing one paw as if none of it were its business.

Afterwards the skipper bolted a brass lamp above the galley table, its glass polished until the flame threw a ring of orange across the bulkhead. Ada took a spare brass link from the engine room, threaded it on a cord and wore it under her apron, though she never said why. Each night the cat slept curled beneath the lamp, as if it had decided the ring of light was its own to guard, and when the Marigold tied up at Hull the men carried it down the gangplank on their shoulders and nobody asked where it had come from again.