Black line drawing of an ornamental cat face framed by roses, leaves and swirling stems, in the style of a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental cat face with roses

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised cat face sits at the centre of the design, with a lattice pattern on the forehead and filigree detailing around the eyes and muzzle. Roses, leaves and curling vine-like stems surround the head and fill the outer areas. The drawing uses only black outlines on a white background, with no shading or colour.

Botanical Cat Rose Leaves Swirl Vine Lattice

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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

The oven clicked off at twenty past four and Admiral, the grey tom who sleeps under the proving cabinet, climbed onto the cooling rack to inspect my work. I had a tray of rose-water shortbreads to finish and a tart to build before the first van came round, and he thought little of either.

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The tart was for Dolores Pryce from the house on Fenner Lane. She had brought in a napkin the night before with a drawing on it in blue biro: a cat's face with a diamond lattice down the forehead, eyes hooded in curls, roses as fat as fists crowding the ears. Her mother had kept a cat like that, she said, and wanted it in pastry before the funeral. I said I would try. I had never piped a face before.

I started with the lattice, because lattice forgives you. Thin ribbons of dough crossed and crimped, each a little less steady than the last. Then the eyes, which I did three times. The swirls round the muzzle I drew with a cocktail stick dipped in egg wash so they would bake gold rather than grey. The roses I cut from scraps with a thimble and curled by hand. By the time the window over the sink turned from black to the colour of dishwater, the thing on the board was a cat with a face like a secret.

Dolores came in at seven, looked once and went quiet. She touched the edge of the tart with one finger, then took the finger away as if it might leave a mark. Admiral dropped from the rack, walked the length of the bench and sat beside the pastry with his tail wrapped round his feet. Neither of them looked at me. I boxed the tart in greaseproof and let them have the last of the dark.