A grey tabby kitten rests on an arm with a traditional-style snake and flower tattoo on the forearm and a LUCK banner tattoo on the upper arm.

Kitten resting on a tattooed forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A grey tabby kitten with pale blue eyes rests its front paws on a bare forearm covered in black linework tattoos. The forearm design shows a coiled snake and rose-like flowers with bold outlines and light shading, while the upper arm carries a banner reading LUCK above a dark bird-like shape. Small areas of colour appear near the wrist, and the rest of the image is in muted tones against a dark fabric background.

Traditional Forearm Upper arm Cat Kitten Snake Flower Banner Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At twenty to three the linen cupboard on Ward Seven smelled of warm starch, and Maureen Tibbs was halfway through counting pillowcases when the mewing started behind the stack of blankets. The kitten had come in with the morning delivery of bed frames, or so the porters swore, and it had made a nest in a box marked FRAGILE. Its eyes were a washed-out blue, like a gown boiled one time too many.

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Maureen had been told, by the ward sister and then by a laminated leaflet on infection control, that animals did not belong on Ward Seven. She fed it tuna from her own sandwich instead of reporting it. When the bell went for bay four, she carried the kitten out on her arm, where it hooked its front paws over her wrist and stared at the drip stand as though it were the most interesting thing in the building. Mr Okafor in bed four had been asking for the time every ten minutes, and the kitten seemed to understand that this was a job for quiet hands.

The bell rang again at four, then at half past, and each time she had to set the kitten down on the cupboard step. It sat there washing one ear, unbothered. By the time the windows greyed over the car park she had finished the observations, and her legs ached from being on her feet since ten the night before. She went back to the cupboard and found the box empty, except for a folded paper note tucked into one corner.

Someone had drawn a swallow on it in blue biro, and above the bird, in careful capitals, was one word: LUCK. She had no idea who had written it, so she stood for a while holding it, listening to Mr Okafor ask the time again.