Colour tattoo of Hello Kitty posed like a maneki-neko lucky cat, with a red bow, red flowers and a gold coin, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hello Kitty as a lucky cat on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo of the Hello Kitty character seated as a maneki-neko lucky cat, wearing a red bow and a gold coin on a red collar. Red flowers with orange centres and small green leaves frame the figure, and a pale blue wash sits behind it. Bold black outlines and smooth colour shading are shown on a close-up of the forearm against a plain skin background.

Traditional Japanese Forearm Hello kitty Maneki-neko Lucky cat Cat Bow Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry leaves you on the quay at Inish Varra with a crate of oranges and a letter nobody has answered. The shop your grandmother ran sits above the harbour wall, its shutters painted the blue of thin milk, and the window is still full of cats. Hundreds of them, ceramic and cheap, each one lifting a paw as if to call someone in out of the rain. She bought the first from a trader in Kobe forty years ago and never once said why.

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You spend the first week sweeping sand off the floorboards and counting the tills. The gold coin painted on the largest cat has chipped, and the red collar on the one by the door has faded to pink. A fisherman called Dorran comes in each morning for tobacco and stands in front of the window longer than he needs to. On the sixth day he asks what you intend to do with them. You tell him the truth, that you have no idea, and he laughs so hard he has to hold the counter.

That evening you find a ledger wedged under the till. Every line records a cat sold, and beside each one is a small flower drawn in red ink, its petals sharp as a ribbon bow. Forty years of them. The last entry is for the Mairin, Dorran's boat, which went down off the north reef the winter before. Beneath it, in your grandmother's hand: one cat for whoever is still waiting at the window.

In the morning Dorran is outside, cap in his fists. You wrap the largest cat in yesterday's newspaper and pass it across the counter. He takes the gold coin from its collar, turns it over once, and sets it on the sill, and in the window the cat keeps its paw raised, calling nobody in, only waiting.