Two close photographs of a forearm tattoo showing a group of black outline cats huddled near the wrist, with a soft rainbow spray rising above them.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rainbow spray and cat outlines on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a cluster of cats drawn in thin black outline, sitting close together near the wrist. Above them, a watercolour-style rainbow spray in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple fans upward across the forearm. The outline is left unshaded and uncoloured, so the soft rainbow becomes the focal point against the skin, shown in two angled photographs.

Forearm Cat Rainbow Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had told the cats twice to keep off the dye copper, and twice they had ignored her, the four of them packed shoulder to shoulder on the warm brick ledge like wet washing on a line. Down on the quay, the sailcloth hung out to dry in long strips, red for the lifeboat, blue for the ferry, and the smell of madder and indigo drifted up through the loft windows every morning.

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On the Tuesday the copper boiled over. Nell came up the stairs to find the lid rattling and a column of colour leaping out of the spout, first orange, then a yellow that made her squint, then green, then a blue so deep it looked wet. The cats had not moved. They sat in their knot at the base of the steam with their tails tucked round their paws, eyes narrowed, watching the rainbow fan out across the rafters as if it had been ordered for their benefit.

She should have shouted. Instead she fetched her tin of sketching pencils and sat on the floor beside them, and for an hour she drew only the cats, thin and quick, so as not to lose the shape of them while the colours rose and bent and settled. Mrs Hale from the chandlery came up to complain about the smell and stayed to watch.

When the copper cooled there was no mess at all, only a faint sheen of purple on the windowsill and the cats, asleep now, heaped together in a ball. Nell pinned the drawing above the stove. Years later, when the sailcloth trade had gone and the loft had been let to a man who sold candles, the drawing still hung there, and the cats still sat on the warm brick, looking pleased with themselves.