Two arms pressed together showing matching colourful neo-traditional lucky cat tattoos on the upper arms, one orange and one teal, with flowers and hearts.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching lucky cat tattoos on upper arms

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

Two arms rest together, each with a maneki-neko lucky cat tattoo. The cats have bold black outlines, smooth colour fills in orange and teal, pink blush, heart motifs on their chests and gold collars, with small flowers and a crane on the coin-like charms. The colour is saturated and the composition is centred on each cat, with the two designs mirrored side by side.

Neo-trad Upper arm Lucky cat Maneki-neko Cat Flower Heart Crane Coin Collar

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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

Dear Hana, the officer at Calais unpacked the whole tin of tea, then asked what else I had up my sleeve. I said only that my sister had the other half of the luck. He looked at the orange cat on my arm, then at the teal one on your side of the photograph, and waved us on with the expression of a man deciding not to have a feeling about it.

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The shop above the laundrette in Margate did both cats in one afternoon. The tattooist, a man with a moustache like a paintbrush, said the raised paw beckons custom and the coin on the chest keeps it. You chose orange because you always said you would be the bright one. I chose green because Grandmother told me teal was the colour of water that has already decided where it is going. He drew a little crane onto each charm, folded from the tissue paper that came with her last letter, which we had both read until it went soft at the creases.

Halfway across the Channel I went out on deck to be sick, found the rail too cold to hold, and held your hand instead, elbows crooked together the way we used to on the bus home from school. The cats pressed their pink cheeks towards each other and the little flowers nearly touched. I thought of the ink as a sort of passport, stamped where nobody could take it off, and I did not want to be the one who arrived without the other.

Write back once you have a settled address. Tell me whether the crane on your charm still has its wings, or whether the salt has got into the folds the way it got into mine. I will leave the kettle on until you do.