Traditional colour tattoo of a skeletal cat head and ribcage in an orange oval frame with a red rose, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skeletal cat and rose on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A skeletal cat head and ribcage sit inside an orange oval frame set against a red circle, with a curved black tail-like shape rising above. A red rose with green leaves overlaps the lower left of the frame. Bold black outlines and solid fills of red, orange, green and grey shading define the bones and petals, with a clean, saturated finish.

Traditional Forearm Cat Skeleton Skull Ribcage Rose Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat had been dead nine days before anyone thought to tell the cook, and Nell Harrod heard it first from the boy who scrubbed the pots. 'She's stiff in the bread locker, Miss,' he said, the way another lad might report a fouled rope. Nell set down the onion knife, wiped her hands on her sacking apron, and went to see for herself, though she had known from the empty saucer by the stove since Tuesday.

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Pudding had come aboard the Marigold as a kitten in a sack of Baltic oats, and she had ruled the galley ever since: the warm lid of the copper, the flour bin, the rat-catching rota she took more seriously than any mate. Nell lifted her out with both hands. The fur was thin at the ribs and the eyes had gone milky, but she weighed nothing at all. Through the grey gloom of the locker the ship's bell struck four, and the hull groaned as the swell came under the quarter.

The captain said the cat was not on the articles and so could not be buried with ceremony, which was fair enough, but Nell did not argue with him. She took a length of red flannel from the slops, a dried rose from the tin where the purser kept petals for the Sunday pudding, and sewed the cat into a shroud at the galley table while the stove ticked down. When the first light came through the porthole, she tipped the bundle over the rail and watched the wake take it.

Back in the galley she wrote in the log under the day's stores: one cat, Pudding, mouser, eleven years aboard, lost to the sea in fair weather. Then she sat with her elbows on the scrubbed table and did not peel a single potato until the boy came back with the bread.