A sleeping tabby cat rests its paw on a forearm with a colourful traditional-style skull and rose tattoo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sleeping tabby cat resting on a tattooed forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A tabby cat sleeps curled against a bed sheet, one paw draped over a tattooed forearm. The tattoo includes a skull with pink and red roses above it, a red flower at the lower left, and black linework and shading elsewhere on the arm. Bold outlines and a soft, warm vintage tone dominate the photograph, with the pink and red ink standing out against the white bedding.

Traditional Forearm Cat Tabby cat Sleeping cat Skull Rose Flower Arm

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tabby came aboard at Ferrand Lock the week the Sallow froze, a thin grey thing with one white foot, and he would not be put off. Mother Pell said he was a bad-luck cat. Her son Tobiah said he was a good-luck cat and the ice would break once he had settled. Nobody asked the cat.

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The skull on Tobiah's arm was the one thing the cat seemed to trust. Old Mrs Pell had inked it the summer before she died, with roses above it in red and pink, because she said a man who worked the locks ought to carry his own weather. Each evening the cat climbed onto the bunk, found the forearm lying out of the blanket, and folded his paw across the roses as if they were a pillow he had paid for.

The thaw came in March, and with it the coal boats and the long queue at the gates. Tobiah had to take the last load south to Cadwell, and the cat sat on the gunwale and would not go ashore with anyone. When Tobiah came back nine days later, the cat was waiting on the cabin roof. It stood, stretched, and walked the length of the boat to the bunk, where it lay down on the blanket with its paw out, waiting for an arm that was not there yet.