Black and white photo of four fingers with fine line tattoos: the letters M, E and W and a small cat face, one on each finger, placed on the hand.

Letters and a cat on four fingers

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Four fingers are shown, each with a small black tattoo: the letter M on the little finger, the letter E on the ring finger, a line drawn cat face on the middle finger, and the letter W on the index finger. The linework is thin and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The photograph is black and white, with a blurred light background and glittered nail polish visible on each fingertip.

Fine line Lettering Hand Cat Cat face Finger tattoo Initial

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The O had gone from the case the same week the foreman's cat had her kittens in the drawer of the ornament cabinet, so when I came in on the Monday to set the Hallam Street notice, the word sat on the composing stick looking like a sneeze: M, E, a gap, W.

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Mr Pidgeon wanted the notice out by noon and had no patience for a new sort to be cast in Birmingham. I rummaged the ornament drawer, past the fleurons and the little printer's hand with its pointing finger, and found a brass cat's head no bigger than a thumbnail, its ears worn soft from years of rolling under other men's thumbs. It had been cut for a tailor's device and nobody had asked for it since. I pressed it into the gap, locked up the forme and pulled the proof myself.

The notice ran on the Tuesday: a lost spaniel, two shillings reward, and a line at the foot that read MEW. Readers wrote in to say it was a typesetter's error, and Mr Pidgeon fined me a penny for the cat. By Friday he had ordered three more of them cast, and the Gazette's readers grew so fond of the little face in every notice with a vowel to spare that the advertisers began asking for it by name.

That week Dorcas herself sat on the warm lid of the cabinet and watched me set the next column, her tail curled over her paws, as though she had recognised her own likeness in the type and was waiting, politely, for her share of the fee.