Black linework tattoo on an upper arm showing a smiling maneki-neko cat above a ramen bowl with chopsticks, kawaii sushi characters and floral patterns.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Maneki-neko cat with ramen and sushi on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The design centres on a smiling maneki-neko cat with closed eyes and a raised paw, set above a bowl of noodles with two chopsticks. Kawaii sushi pieces with cheerful faces and flower motifs fill the lower and surrounding areas. The work is mostly clean black outline with little shading, and the composition wraps around the upper arm and shoulder.

Japanese Upper arm Shoulder Maneki-neko Cat Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The noodle cart on the lower ring of Tessel Station had lost its custom so long ago that the regulars had forgotten its name, but the cat painted on its shutter still raised a paw at everyone who walked past. Mirin Abo kept the cart running on salvaged heat and stubbornness. She said the cat had come with the cart, and that a cat who waves is never wrong about who needs feeding.

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Juno Harrow came in off the freight dock with her drone's cargo still ticking in its crate and a split lip from a docking clamp. She sat on the stool nearest the shutter. The cat's paw lifted as she passed, its eyes sealed shut in a smile, as if it were laughing at a joke that happened somewhere behind them. Mirin set down a bowl of broth with a pink-cheeked fish cake on its side, a sliced sea-plum bun whose face was winking, and two chopsticks standing upright in the noodles.

'Don't pull those apart,' Mirin said. 'Standing chopsticks mean the cook is owed a story, and I've had none in nine years.'

So Juno told her one. She told about a freighter called the Lantern that had gone dark between the moons, and about the crew who kept sending a small paw-shaped signal from the hull long after anyone could have heard it. When she finished, the sushi faces on the counter had gone quiet, and the chopsticks had tipped over on their own. The cat's paw came down. Its eyes opened, and they were green, the colour of the Lantern's running lights.

Mirin wiped the counter and said nothing. When Juno looked back from the dock, the cat was waving again, and a little white flower had been painted behind its ear.