Snarling big cat head in dotwork

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A big cat's head is shown in profile, mouth wide open in a snarl and fangs visible. The form is built from fine stippled dots that create shading across the fur, cheek and jaw, with a few sharp whisker lines near the mouth. The design is entirely black ink on pale skin, set against a plain light background.

Dotwork Calf Big cat Fangs Animal head Cat Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain came sideways off the river at half four, and by five the market had emptied to three people who would not pack up: the knife grinder, the pie man, and you, under a blue tarpaulin that sagged a little more with every gust. On your trestle sat a crate of mismatched door knockers and, at the back, the brass cat head nobody had wanted since spring. It had come out of a house clearance in Shipley, its mouth wrenched open in a snarl, fangs polished bright where a hundred hands had lifted it, the rest gone the green of old pennies.

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You had priced it at eleven pounds, then at forty out of pure contrariness. Nobody laughed at forty. Then a woman in a yellow mac stopped with her hood dripping and asked after the cat, and her voice caught when she said her dad had kept one just like it on the front door of a terraced house that sold last month. She counted coins from her palm in the grey light: nine pounds and some coppers. You looked at the rain beading off her sleeve and said nine would do, which was a lie you could afford to tell on a day like this.

She wrapped the knocker in a carrier bag and headed for the bus stop with it held against her chest like something alive. The pie man shouted that you would catch your death, and you were about to shout back when you saw the puddle under the stall. The rain had struck it in a thousand fine pocks, and the lamplight caught each one, so the whole surface looked stippled and shadowed, as if someone had been patiently working at it with a very fine pen. On the bare crate, where the brass had sat, the dust still held its pale outline, a snarl with nothing left inside it, aimed at the weather.