Colour tattoo of a curled-up sleeping cat with black outlines and watercolour-style splashes in blue, green, purple and orange, placed on the ankle.

Sleeping cat with watercolour splashes on an ankle

Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A black-outlined cat curled into a loose circle, with its head resting on its front paws and eyes closed. The black and grey fur contrasts with watercolour-style washes of blue, green, purple, pink and orange that fill the body and spread into splashes and dots around it. The design sits centrally on the ankle against plain pale skin, with a white covering behind.

Ankle Cat Sleeping cat Paint splash Watercolour Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, and the rain stopped just as we tied up below Sutton Lock. Soot has found the paint again. I left the tins of ultramarine and viridian open on the cabin step while I fetched water, and when I came back she had walked the whole length of the roof in a line of blue pawprints, then curled up on the sailcloth as if she had been commissioned to do it.

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Dad always said never let a cat sleep on wet work. I spent an hour with turps and a rag, and she sneezed at me the whole time, a little bored, flicking her striped tail. The orange from the sunset lead tin came out of her fur in the end, but the pink from the rose border stayed behind her ear and the green never left her chin. Mrs Pargeter at the lock says a cat painted by accident brings a boat through the locks without a single gate sticking, so I am not going to argue with her about it.

We are four days from Reading and the roses still need finishing. I keep telling myself I will paint the castle panel tomorrow, but tomorrow I will probably have to lift Soot off the new lettering, which is wet again because I was too tired to wait.

Tonight she has settled on the step with her nose tucked under one paw, the stove ticking and the river going past in the dark. Her fur has gone the colours of the boat: blue along her back, a bruise of purple across her shoulder, a little green curling round the tail. I left her there. The castle can wait for the morning.