Black and white line drawing of a cat's head in intricate ornamental patterns, with no tattoo placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental cat head line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A cat's head in profile is drawn in black ink on a white background, with the eyes, nose and whiskers visible. The ears and face are filled with dense, repeated patterns of swirls, dots, zigzags and floral motifs. The image uses only black linework with no shading or colour, and the cat is cropped to the left of the frame with open white space on the right.

Cat Cat head Whiskers Eye Ornamental pattern Swirl Floral motif

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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 Tom, the rain has been coming sideways across the market since Tuesday and the lace has gone limp on the rail, so I have given up on selling it and am sitting in the back of the stall with the ledger open on my knees. Mrs Okafor from the fish stall says it is the wettest October since 1998, which I don't believe, but she has a memory like a steel trap and no reason to lie.

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The cat turned up on Wednesday, under the tarpaulin beside the paraffin tins. Ginger and grey, with a face cut into a hundred little patterns, as if somebody had gone over her with a fine nib and never once lifted it. I have been drawing her on the backs of the invoices. Every zigzag and spiral I copy seems to come out of Gran's sampler, the one with the band of tiny dots along the border that she made the year before the war. I thought I had invented half those shapes myself. Then the cat blinked at me, slow and certain, and I saw the swirl above her left eye was the very swirl Gran stitched above the O of her name.

I have not told anyone this, because it is daft. But I have decided the cat is Gran's pattern given legs and sent to keep an eye on the stall. Yesterday I pinned the best drawing to the awning, face out, and the rain ran straight down through the middle of it without spoiling a single line.

Come home when the boat docks. Bring the grey thread you promised, and don't let the customs man talk you out of it.

Love, Nell