Two side-by-side photos: a black ink wash cat curled on a forearm, and a colourful watercolour-style bird on a shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ink wash cat on forearm and bird on shoulder

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The left photo shows a black cat curled into a loose circle on the inside of a forearm, with soft grey wash shading and a brush-like tail sweeping around it. The right photo shows a bird with a teal head, orange breast and long black tail feathers on a shoulder, with loose, painterly edges and little hard outline. The black and grey cat contrasts with the colour of the bird, and the two images are presented side by side.

Forearm Shoulder Cat Bird

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

Sit down, all of you, and mind the cake. My mother told me this one at a wedding much like this, in a barn with the doors open to the rain, and she swore every word was true except the parts she made up for the children.

Keep reading

There was a cat called Ink, black as wet slate, who lived on the lock-keeper's wall at Hollin Weir. Ink did not chase things. He curled himself into a ring on the warm stones and watched the water go by, and the village said he was waiting for the river to tell him a secret. One April a bird came down onto the sluice gate, a blue-green thing with a copper breast and a tail as long as a brushstroke, and it sang so badly that the whole parish stopped to listen.

Ink stretched his neck, and for the first time in nine years he came down off the wall. The bird did not fly. It hopped closer, cocked its head, and said, plain as any vicar, "You are the only one here who has never asked me for anything." That was the whole courtship. It lasted until the first frost, when the cat carried his ring of warmth across the lane to the hawthorn where the bird kept her nest, and the bird sang the lock-keeper awake to tell him so.

So when you see a cat curled round on himself, know he is not chasing his tail. He is keeping the shape of a promise. Now raise your glasses, and somebody fetch the bride a dry cloth, because the rain has got into the marquee.