Colour Japanese style tattoo of a maneki-neko lucky cat with a red sunburst, cherry blossoms and lotus on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Maneki-neko cat on a thigh

Japanese · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A white maneki-neko cat with a raised paw and a green collar with a bell sits at the centre, holding a gold coin and flanked by a bubble tea drink on the left and a small figure on the right. Behind it a red sunburst rises above pink cherry blossom sprays, and a pink lotus sits at the base. Bold black outlines define the forms, with flat areas of colour and light shading on the cat, set against blurred green foliage in the background.

Japanese Thigh Maneki-neko Cat Cherry blossom Sunburst Lotus Coin

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, sit down, the 6.14 is late again, and that is the only thing in this town that keeps its word. You want to know about the cat? Everybody wants to know about the cat. Ask Mrs Adebayo at the kiosk. She'll tell you it came over on the same train as her husband, which is nonsense, because he came on the bus.

Keep reading

The cat stood on the counter of the tea stall at the top of the steps for thirty-one years, one white paw raised, beckoning every passenger who came up from the subway. Its green collar had a brass bell that rang whenever the door creaked, which was all the time, so nobody ever heard it ring on purpose. Beside it sat a tall plastic cup of purple pearls, a drink the platform lads said was for children, and then they drank three of them before the rain came in. Behind the cat, every dawn, the sun came up red over the goods yard, and blossom from the cherry tree by the bike rack blew straight through the open window.

In the spring of the great flood, the platform drain backed up and the water came into the booking hall ankle deep. Mrs Adebayo lifted the cat onto the ticket office shelf and went home without it. When she came back the cat was sitting in a pond of its own reflection, pink lotus flowers floating around its base like a cake decoration. Nobody could say where they came from. The gardener swore there was no lotus within a mile. Mrs Adebayo said the cat had called them, and that was the end of the argument.

So when the 6.14 pulls in tonight, look at the tea stall. The coin in the cat's hand is gold paint on tin and worth nothing, which is exactly why nobody has ever stolen it. Lift your hand the way the cat does. The train will still be late. But you'll have been beckoned, and on a platform this cold, that counts for something.