Colour Japanese tattoo of a maneki-neko lucky cat and a red daruma doll with pink cherry blossoms on the top of a foot.

Lucky cat and daruma on a foot

Japanese · Other · Colour · Photo

A grey maneki-neko lucky cat with a red collar, gold bell and green bib sits beside a red daruma doll on the top of a foot. Pink and red cherry blossoms and falling petals frame the cat and doll. Bold black outlines and flat fills with soft shading give the piece a clear, saturated look against the pale skin.

Japanese Traditional Other Maneki-neko Lucky cat Cherry blossom Petal Bell Cat Doll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hana had not meant to let the cat in, but the rain came sideways over the hill that March, and the grey creature was sitting on her step with one paw raised, as if it had been waiting to be asked. She dried it with an old sack and gave it the heel of yesterday's rice cake. The cat did not thank her. It looked past her at the garden, where the cherry tree was just beginning to open, and it lifted its paw once more.

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The next morning there was a red doll on the step, round as a plum, with a face of fierce and painted disapproval and two blank white eyes. Hana's grandmother had told her that a daruma must be given one eye before its wish can be seen, and the other is painted only when the wish comes true. Hana had no wish she was willing to name, so she set the doll on the shelf beside the tea caddy and forgot it.

The cat came back every morning after that and sat beside the doll. Petals drifted into the garden, pink and then red as the frost went out of the soil, and they settled on the step and on the cat's back until it looked like something that had been lucky for a long time. In the second week the doll had both eyes painted, though Hana had not painted them. The brush lay dry on the sill beside it.

When she carried her tea out to the cherry tree, she found the cat asleep at its roots, a small gold bell at its throat, the branches in full flower above them both. She understood then that the wish had never been hers to make. She poured a little tea onto the grass for the cat, and the petals came down softly into the cup she left behind.