Two matching maneki-neko lucky cat tattoos on a pair of wrists, one in black outline with black spots and one in red outline, in a Japanese style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching maneki-neko cats on wrists

Japanese · Other · Mixed · Photo

Two matching beckoning cat designs sit side by side on the inside of the wrists, one drawn in black and one in red. Both show a seated cat with a raised paw, closed eyes, whiskers, a collar and a coin with a character motif on the belly, drawn in clean outlines with minimal shading. The black cat has spots on its head and ear, and the red cat is shown in a single colour against a light background.

Japanese Fine line Other Maneki-neko Cat Lucky cat Coin Matching tattoo Outline Wrist

Find an artist for this

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

The black cat had sat on the second shelf of Pell's Pawn in Grimsby for longer than anyone could remember, and in all that time it had beckoned to nobody who came in with money. It lifted its left paw at the gulls on the window ledge and at the damp that crept up the skirting each February. Its red sister had arrived in the same tea chest from a dead man's estate in Hull, and she sat beside it with her coin glowing like a coal, waiting for her turn to be useful.

Keep reading

Mr Pell dusted them every Saturday and told them about the tide. One rainy afternoon a girl called Ivy came in with a shoebox of pennies and asked which cat was the lucky one. Pell said the black was for keeping and the red was for going out. Ivy counted out forty-two pennies, sticky from her pocket, and carried the red cat home under her coat, holding its coin against her chest so it wouldn't knock.

The black cat stayed where it was through the winter. The radiator knocked, the window fogged, and the paw kept rising for customers who only wanted stamps. Its sister, by then, was on a windowsill in a farmhouse out past the Wolds, watching frost form on the glass while Ivy's mother baked bread and the dog snored under the table.

In March a woman came in out of the sleet to ask about an old clock. Pell was at the back, so she wandered to the second shelf and found the black cat looking straight at her, paw lifted, as it had looked at the door for years. She laughed, and the laugh surprised her. She bought the clock, and then the cat, and walked out into the wet with it tucked under her arm, still beckoning the whole length of the street.