Black cat tattoo with patterned bands on the upper arm, in a blackwork and neo-traditional style with a few pink accents.

Ornamented black cat on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A sitting black cat in profile fills the upper arm, with its ears, neck, body and legs wrapped in bands of geometric and scalloped ornament. The solid black fill is smooth and dense, while the patterns use fine black linework and grey shading. Small pink accents appear inside the ears and in some ornamental areas, and a banded strap sits below the cat near the elbow.

Blackwork Neo-trad Upper arm Cat Black cat Sitting cat Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had shut the Hollin pass on the third day, and Marta Vell counted beds the way other people counted sheep. Four rooms, two of them damp. One guest in the back room, paying in old silver and refusing to give his name. The black cat, Oshe, sat on the settle by the hearth with her tail folded round her feet. She did not look at the stranger once, which Marta had learned meant she was watching him closely.

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Her grandmother said the cat had come over the pass with the first family who built the inn. Her body was wrapped in bands of patterned cloth so she could be known at any door. Each band, the old woman said, was a promise: a bed made, a fire kept, a traveller brought in before dark. Marta had never seen the bands fade, though the shawls they were copied from had gone to moth long ago.

Near midnight the stranger came into the kitchen carrying a bundle in oilcloth, tied with a strap that he kept touching as if it might come undone. Oshe rose, stretched, and walked to him. She sat down against the bundle and would not move. The man stood very still, then set it on the flags, took his silver back from the table, and went out into the blue dark without his boots. Marta did not stop him.

In the morning the snow had stopped and the road showed black along the valley. The bundle was gone. On the hearth lay a small brass bell, the sort that hangs from a harness, and the leather strap on Oshe's leg had been loosened and rebuckled, as if someone had been in a hurry. Marta picked up the bell and turned it over. Oshe licked one paw, washed her face, and looked at the door. Marta counted the beds again, and came to one more than she had before.