Colour tattoo of a smiling maneki-neko cat holding a red daruma doll, with a pink flower and petal, in Japanese style on the inner wrist.

Maneki-neko cat and daruma on the inner wrist

Japanese · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A smiling white maneki-neko cat with a gold bell and teal collar sits beside a red and white daruma doll, with a pink flower and a falling cherry blossom petal to the side. The linework is soft and the shading is grey and brown, giving the cat and doll some depth against the skin. Ink is mostly warm and pastel tones with touches of red, yellow, teal and pink, set on the inner wrist and centred in the frame.

Japanese Forearm Maneki-neko Cat Cherry blossom Flower Petal Bell

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, that lift has never once stopped level, and hold the rail going up to the ninth. Right, where was I. Ah yes, Mrs Okafor's cat. It wasn't hers, she'd tell you so herself, since a cat that lives on a balcony in Thornfield House belongs to the wind and the pigeons. But it sat on her sill every evening with one white paw raised, beckoning the lads off the bus, and it wore a teal ribbon with a brass bell that rang whenever the wind shook the flat.

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Everyone on the estate knew the rule about the dolls. The Japanese woman on the market sold them round and red with no eyes at all. You painted in the left one when you made your wish, then waited, and only when the thing came true did you paint in the right. Mrs Okafor bought three. She painted the left eye on each of them on the same Tuesday, set them on the windowsill beside the cat, and never touched the brushes again.

The winter the lifts broke, she carried the cat's dinner up nine flights in a carrier bag, and her knees did not forgive her for it. Her boy had gone south for work and had stopped ringing on Sundays. One night, with the bell going and the cold coming through the glass, she sat on the top step outside her own door and said out loud that she only wanted him to telephone. She said it mostly to the cat. Then she went in, found the brush, and painted the right eye of the largest doll, though nothing had happened yet.

The phone went the following Sunday, and it was him, saying he was coming home for Easter. She painted nothing more after that. Next morning the cat was on the sill with its paw up, the bell ringing, and when Mrs Okafor went down to the lift it opened level for once, as if it had been told.