Colour traditional tattoo of a skeleton-faced black cat, a red rose and blue flowers above a banner reading Siempre en mi corazon, on the upper arm.

Skeleton cat and rose banner on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a black cat with a white skull-style face and rib-like markings on its paws, sitting above a red rose, blue flowers and green leaves. A yellow and orange banner across the lower half reads 'SIEMPRE EN MI CORAZON' in bold letters. Thick black outlines and flat solid fills give a bold, graphic look, and the design is centred on the upper arm.

Traditional Upper arm Cat Skull Banner Rose Flower Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had come down on the fish market since before light, and Marta's stall was the only one with its awning still up, because the black cat would not go inside. He sat on a wet crate beside the scales with his white ribbed paws folded under him, watching the people who hurried past as if he were counting them and had lost his place twice already.

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Her grandmother said a cat with its bones showing on the outside had already been to the other side of things and came back with no fear of weather. Marta did not know if that was true, but she knew the cat never got wet. Each morning she sold roses from a tin bucket, mostly red, and a few yellow ones for men who were late with their apologies. Every Thursday Begoña the tinsmith's widow bought one red rose and walked off without paying, and every Thursday Marta let her, because the old woman's face was kinder when she was given something for nothing.

This Thursday Begoña did not come. By noon the rain was running off the tiles in ropes, and the cat stood up for the first time in months. He stepped down from the crate, past the fish heads and the sodden cardboard, and stopped at the mouth of the lane that climbed to the tin roofs. He looked back once at Marta, the way a person looks back to be sure they are being followed.

She followed him. The door at the top of the lane was open a crack. Begoña lay on the kitchen floor with a kettle still warm beside her, and the cat walked in over the threshold as if he had been invited. Marta knelt, took a red rose from her apron, and laid it on the wet tiles beside the old woman's hand. Siempre en mi corazón, she said quietly, because it was the only thing she had ever heard Begoña say about her husband. The cat sat down against the widow's shoulder and did not move until the rain stopped.