Black and grey tattoo of a heart outline enclosing three shaded paw prints on the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart outline with three paw prints

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A heart outline in solid black line encloses three paw prints, each shaded in soft grey with darker tones at the pads. The heart line is bold and slightly tapered, while the paw prints are rendered with a three-dimensional, dimpled finish. The design sits on warm skin and fills most of the frame, with the paw prints arranged in a loose triangle inside the heart.

Other Heart Paw print Outline

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The galley on the Marguerite Vane has been wrong for three days, quiet in all the wrong places. Nobody has moved the flour sack, though the flour sits in a way you don't like. You scrape the porridge pan and listen for the thump of a tabby dropping from the shelf, and when it doesn't come, Mr Ferris bellows from the rail for salt pork. You stand a moment too long with the knife in your hand.

Keep reading

You have searched the hold, the bosun's locker and the sail room where the canvas smells of linseed. The chief engineer's boy swears he saw nothing, which is the only lie you have ever caught him in. Then, at first light, you find three prints pressed clean into the dust on the flour lid, each pad dimpled deep and the toes a neat cluster above, all leading toward the bow.

You follow them up the companionway and out onto the forecastle, where the anchor chain lies coiled like a sleeping dog. Hob is curled in the bight of it, grey with salt and perfectly pleased with himself. Beside him, cut into the wet wood of the hatch cover, someone has drawn a rough heart in one unbroken line, and in its middle the same three prints, pressed in with the heel of a hand.

You crouch and lift him, and he complains into your collar as if you were the one who went missing. Later you will tell the cook's mate that the heart was a chart, a map back to the cat, and he will laugh, and you will let him. Hob purrs against your coat the whole way down to the galley, a small engine running steady in the dark.