Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a hairless sphynx cat head on a calf, with large ears and closed eyes.

Sphynx cat head on a lower leg

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a hairless sphynx cat head facing forward, with large upright ears, wrinkled brow and skin folds, and closed eyes outlined in fine lines. The design is built from dense stippled dots and short strokes that create soft shading across the face and ears, with a dark nose and mouth. It is rendered entirely in black and grey ink against pale skin, with a dark background framing the limb.

Dotwork Calf Cat Sphynx cat Animal Cat head Ear

Find an artist for this

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

Pass me the peel, and mind that tray, it's still hot enough to take the skin off a knuckle. No, not that loaf, the one with the split top. There. Now listen, because the cat is asleep and the bakery is at its quietest, which is the only time I'll tell this story.

Keep reading

Old Mrs Ferrier kept the bakery on Tanner Row when my own mother was a girl. Her cat came in one February with no fur on him at all, grey and wrinkled as a walnut, the kind of creature the travelling men said was half something else. He had great upright ears like a bat's, and he sat in the warm lee of the proving drawer with his eyes shut tight. Nobody ever saw him open them in daylight. He looked like a bishop who had lost an argument with the weather.

Every morning before the first bell, Mrs Ferrier would find the loaves already risen, the crust blistered just so, and the flour on the sill swept into the shape of a closed eye. She blamed the cat and she loved him for it. Then came the winter the mill burned and took the wheat with it, and there was nothing to bake but stale ends. On the last dark morning she sat on an empty sack with her head in her hands, and the cat climbed into her lap, pressed his warm bare skin against her wrist, and for the first time opened his eyes. They were the colour of cooling crust, and they looked at the empty drawer the way a patient man looks at a shut door.

By the time the bell rang, the drawer was full of bread. Nobody on Tanner Row ever asked where the flour came from, and Mrs Ferrier never said. She only left a saucer of milk by the oven each night and told anyone who asked that the cat had earned his warmth. So mind the tray, Tom. And if you hear a purr that sounds like a bellows, don't go looking for it. He's only checking the dough.