Fine line tattoo of a sleeping cat curled up on the foot, in black and grey, with a drawing of the same design on paper below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sleeping cat outline on a foot

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a small tattoo of a cat curled up asleep, drawn with a single thin continuous black outline on the foot. Below it, on white paper, is a hand-drawn version of the same cat design, which shows the composition before it was inked. The skin has soft grey tones and the tattoo is sharp and simple against it.

Fine line Other Cat Sleeping cat Outline

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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

Ruth had drawn the cat four times on the back of a bakery invoice before Mo stopped pretending to read the till roll and asked her to just finish the line. "It has to come off the pen in one go," she said, "or it looks like someone tried twice." Outside the window of the shuttered print shop on Cable Street, the rain had thinned to a fine grey mist that hung under the streetlamps like flour.

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The cat belonged to nobody. It slept on the warm vent behind the laundrette, a tight curl with its nose tucked under one paw and its tail wrapped round like a dropped rope. Ruth had passed it for three weeks on her walk home from the late shift, and she had decided that a creature could be entirely finished and still be waiting for someone to notice. She did not say that to Mo. Mo was twenty-two and believed everything needed a reason.

The next morning the vent was cold. Ruth walked the length of the lane twice, checking the bins and the bus shelter, then stood in the laundrette while the dryers thumped behind the glass. Mo's tracing lay on the counter where she had left it. Ruth pinned it to the corkboard beside the lost dog notices and the flyer for a stolen bicycle, and the woman who ran the laundrette, who had never once spoken to Ruth beyond the price of a wash, tapped the paper with one finger. "Like that, was it?" she said. "Curled up, like it had nowhere it had to be."

Ruth went back out into the lane, where the grate was steaming and nothing was on it yet, and waited with her hands in her pockets until something small and grey came round the corner, stopped, looked at her as if she were the one who needed to explain herself, and then, slowly, lay down.