Colour traditional Japanese maneki-neko lucky cat tattoo with a gold coin, shown on the arm.

Maneki-neko lucky cat on the arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A grey and white maneki-neko lucky cat sits upright with one paw raised and the other resting on a gold coin marked with Japanese characters. It has bold black outlines, smooth grey shading around the eyes and face, and a red collar with a teal bib. Red ears, yellow and orange patches and pink paw pads add colour against the pale skin, and a patterned fabric sits at the right edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Ren had counted the offering box three times before the bell for vespers, and each time the total came out a little less than the rice bill owed to the mill at the foot of the hill. The abbot had stopped asking. The cat had not. Mochi sat on the lacquered step of the storehouse with one white-tipped paw lifted, as though she were the one keeping the accounts, and every visitor who climbed the stone steps received the same polite wave.

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On the ninth day of the rains a carter came through, soaked to the skin, leading a mule with a broken axle. He had a bundle of silk under one arm and a face that had already decided not to pay for anything. Ren brought him under the eaves and poured him tea. The cat stood, stretched, and padded across the wet boards to the carter's boot, where she set her paw on a gold coin Ren had never seen before. It was old and thin, stamped with characters he could only half read. She had found it, he supposed, under the floorboards with the mice.

The carter laughed, then stopped laughing, then took out his purse. He pressed three copper cash into the box and gave the coin to Ren, saying the mule was worth more than the axle anyway. By morning the rain had cleared and the mill bill was paid in full, though the abbot swore the coin had belonged to his mother and spent a week searching the cellar for its twin.

Mochi was on the step when Ren came out with the broom. She raised her paw at him, bright and unbothered. He did not tell the abbot where the gold had come from. Nobody ever asks a cat where the luck comes from.

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