Colour tattoo of a smiling maneki-neko lucky cat with a red collar and gold bell on the chest, in a Japanese style with soft watercolour-like shading.

Maneki-neko lucky cat on chest

Japanese · Chest · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a smiling maneki-neko lucky cat with closed eyes, whiskers, red blush marks and a red studded collar with a gold bell. The cat is drawn with bold dark outlines and soft grey, teal and red shading that gives a painted, watercolour-like finish. It sits centrally on the chest, shown in two close-up photographs, with a pink polo shirt and a floral fabric collar framing it.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, the cat you asked about is still on the mantel above the gas fire, though its bell has gone quiet since Mrs Okonedo knocked it with her broom in March. I haven't had it mended. Your grandfather always said the bell was never the lucky part. The lucky part was that the cat kept smiling while everything else in the shop was shouting.

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We bought it from a stall at Camden Lock in 1968, the year the Palais on Ashby Road was still doing Saturday dances with a proper band. Stanley paid ten shillings the stallholder wanted and haggled him down to eight. The paint was fresh, grey wash over the face, red cheeks like someone had pinched them, eyes shut as if it had heard a joke nobody else in the market was clever enough to get. He carried it all the way to the Palais in his coat pocket, and when we danced the bell rang against his ribs every time he turned me.

He proposed on the back stairs after the last waltz, and the cat rang out loud enough that the caretaker came to see who was falling down them. I said yes mostly to stop the bell. We were married thirty-one years, and I still hear that bell when the wind shifts the back door.

So bring your own key for the bell when you come up on Sunday. It's the only thing in this house that still needs one.

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