Two maneki-neko lucky cat tattoos on a seated person's thighs in grey shading, beside a colour neo-traditional cartoon black cat tattoo on the top of a foot.

Maneki-neko thigh tattoos and cartoon cat on foot

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

The left photo shows a person seated with two maneki-neko lucky cat tattoos on their thighs, drawn in bold outlines with grey shading and light teal accents on the collars. The right photo shows a cartoon black cat with a white face and green eyes on the top of a bare foot, set against a red watercolour-style background. The image is a side-by-side collage with a mostly grey left panel and a colourful right panel.

Neo-trad Japanese Thigh Other Maneki-neko Lucky cat Cat Black cat Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, it's still wet from the flour sack, and keep your voice down, the ovens are only just waking. Ada Vellacott had two cats in her shop window, both white and both forever beckoning the street, one with its left paw raised, one with its right. Customers thought the pair were a joke. Ada never said otherwise.

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The third cat came in the winter the harbour froze. Black as coal tar, with a face like spilt milk and eyes the green of sea glass, it sat itself down on the cooling rack and would not be shifted. Ada's husband Frank wanted it out. Ada let it stay, and it slept among the sacks of rye, and every morning before the bakers arrived it sat on the sill and stared at the back door until she came down.

One morning in February it stared harder than usual. Ada came down in her slippers and found the gas tap open, the kitchen filling with a sweet, dangerous hiss, and the black cat pressed flat against the door as though it had been holding the lock shut with its own weight. She threw every window open in the dark and hauled the cat out into the cold by its scruff, and it did not even complain.

The white cats still wave from the glass. Ada says they've never once got the credit, and she's right, but the black one gets a saucer of cream every morning and nobody argues with that. Mind your fingers on the tray. Here, have the heel of the loaf, it's still warm.