Black and grey traditional tattoo of a heart holding a human hand and a paw, with a crescent moon, stars, a flower and the words Boys Whatever and Cats Forever, on a limb.

Heart with hand and paw, cats forever lettering

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A heart contains a shaded hand clasping a paw, set against a crescent moon and two small stars. Below, a flower with two leaves sits under the lettering, with Boys Whatever arched above and Cats Forever curved below. The linework is bold and outlined with dotted stippling, and the shading is smooth grey on a pale skin background against a dark surround.

Traditional Lettering Other Heart Hand Paw Cat Crescent moon Star Flower Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the Crown Street dance hall would partner Nell Harrow until she had looked the man over for a cat. Boys came in with pomade and borrowed shirts, and she let them turn her twice around the boards before she asked whether they kept a cat at home. If they said no, she went back to her stool by the stove.

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Then in the spring a cooper's lad called Edwin came in with a bandage on his thumb. He had been bitten by a ginger tom behind the brewery, he said, while lifting it out of the rain barrel. He did not say where the cat was now, only that it had not gone far. Nell looked at the thumb for a long time, then at the dark window where the moon hung over the chimneys.

She stood up and gave him her hand. The fiddler struck a slow waltz, and they went out onto the boards under the lamps. Every few bars Edwin let go of her fingers and crouched, so the ginger tom could walk the length of the floor between their feet with its tail up like a question.

The saying went round the town after that: boys whatever, cats forever. Nell and Edwin married the next winter, and the cat slept on the hearth between them until it grew old. They buried it under the rowan by the lane. The town kept the saying, though Nell always said it had been the other way round, and Edwin never once argued with her.