Black line drawing of a sitting cat with whiskers and a curled tail on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sitting cat line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised cat is shown seated in side-on profile with its head turned towards the viewer. The outline is drawn in bold, smooth black lines with simple detail on the eyes, nose, ears and whiskers, and the body is left unshaded. The image is a single-colour design on a plain white background, with the tail curling round at the base.

Cat Whiskers Tail Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You unlock the back door at half four, flour still on your hands from the first batch, and the cat is already waiting on the step as if it had been posted there. It is grey and white and neat as a folded letter, head tilted to one side, deciding whether you are worth the trouble. Nobody on Chapel Row claims it. Mrs Okafor at the chemist swears it belonged to the sea captain who lodged above the tobacconist and that it has been waiting for him since 1961. You give it the heel of yesterday's rye, and it eats with the dignity of a magistrate.

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Over the following weeks it learns the building the way a night watchman learns his route. It sits on the warm lid of the proving cabinet. It bats the bench scraper off the table and watches it fall. When the oven door opens it leans in just far enough to make you swear, then tucks its tail round its feet and blinks slowly, as though the whole operation was arranged for its benefit. You begin saving the burnt ends for it and tell yourself this is only sensible for a bakery with a boarding house across the road.

One Tuesday in November the step is empty. You wait through the first trays and the second, and by the time St Mary's bell has gone seven the cat still has not come. You find it at last on the sill of the empty shop next door, where the old glassworks lettering has been painted over. It sits exactly as it always sits, looking in at you through the cold glass with its tail curled round its paws, as if it has been watching the bakery's lamp all night to make sure you were still there.

You tap the pane. It does not move. So you go back inside, take the warmest roll from the tray, and carry it out into the grey light, and for once the cat gets up to meet you.