Black and white flash design of a cat's head filled with intricate paisley, floral and dotted patterns, suited to a blackwork tattoo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate cat head design in black linework

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised cat head faces forward, with its eyes, nose and mouth built from dense ornamental patterns. Fine black linework, dots and solid black areas create paisley swirls, geometric shapes and small flowers across the ears, cheeks and forehead. The design is shown in black on white with a symmetrical composition and no background.

Blackwork Dotwork Cat Cat head Paisley Floral Mandala Pattern Ornamental

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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 Ruth, the big top came down in Carlisle on Tuesday and I have not stopped counting the pegs since. Mr Vellacott says the cat is finished, that the Cherry Brothers' Menagerie will be sold to a man in Doncaster who keeps alpacas. I told him the cat was never ours to sell. She came to us in a tea chest labelled 'Mysore, do not open', and she has sat on the drum ever since, judging the audience with those lamp-lit eyes.

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Her face is the thing I cannot stop painting. Every evening I sit on the step of the caravan with a sable brush and a tin of Indian ink and try to copy the swirls from the old poster, the one where she wears a crown of paisley over her ears. The lines never close the same way twice. Dot by dot the pattern grows until she is more ornament than animal, and the children in the front row used to say she was a sun and a garden at once. Last night I finished the left cheek and found I had drawn a small flower where her whiskers should go, and I laughed until I had to sit down.

So I am writing to ask whether the vicarage in Hexham still has the spare room above the coach house. I will bring the tea chest, the brushes and the cat, who has already decided she is coming. Mr Vellacott can keep the drum and the dented trumpet. I want only the poster, which I will frame, and the one tin of ink that still flows.