Traditional style tattoo of a seated cat filled with mandala and paisley ornament in black, grey and red on the forearm.

Ornamental seated cat on forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A seated cat seen in profile fills the skin, with its head turned towards the right. The body is packed with bold black outlines, dotted shading, and mandala and paisley patterns, plus a row of leaf motifs down the back. Muted red and grey wash sits within the black linework, and the tattoo is centred on a plain pale arm against a dark leather background.

Traditional Dotwork Forearm Cat Mandala Paisley Ornament Leaves Tail Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat was already on the wheelhouse step when Tom came down the quay at half four, sitting upright with her tail folded round her feet and her head turned towards the harbour mouth. Nobody in the fleet could say where she slept. Her markings had been a talking point since spring: a column of paisley drops down her back, sprigs of leaves running from shoulder to hip, and on her flank a rosette like the one on Nance Pascoe's wedding shawl. Nance had been dead eleven years, so Tom took the resemblance with salt.

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The Morwenna was short a hand. Skipper Dick Vosper had the engine off its mounts and the wind forecast to back by noon, and Tom had a fortnight's net mending still on his fingers. He sat on the step and knotted blue twine while the cat watched him, unblinking, patient as a lamp. "You'll not get a better crewman," Dick called from the rail, unsure whether he was joking.

They went out on the first of the ebb with the trawl half rigged. Fog came down over Gull Rock by seven, thick as wool, and the compass swung like a drunk. Tom stood at the wheel with nothing to steer by until he noticed the cat on the bow rail, where nobody had put her, her head turned steadily to port. He followed her gaze and found a smear of yellow light low on the water, the harbour lamp, exactly where she had been looking all along.

They made fast by nine. Tom tied off the last rope, and when he looked up the cat had already gone down the gangway and was sitting on the quay again, tail curled over her paws, as though she had only been waiting for the boat to come home.