Black ink tattoo of a stretching cat decorated with tribal patterns and spirals, on the outer upper arm beside a white sleeve.

Stretching cat with tribal patterning on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo of a cat in a long, stretched pose, with its tail curling upwards and its front paws extended forward. The body is filled with concentric circles, zigzag bands, dots and striped sections, all outlined in bold, even linework. The ink is solid black with no colour, shown on smooth skin against a soft, blurred background.

Blackwork Geometric Upper arm Cat Tribal pattern Spiral Tail Zigzag Dot

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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

Four thirty, and the dough has risen faster than I have woken, so I have left it sulking under its cloths and come down to the back room with a cup of stewed tea. Tallow is already here, on the warm lid of the proving cabinet where the glow from the oven door falls. He has stretched himself out long as a loaf tin, front paws shoved forward across the flour sacks, back legs trailing, tail lifted into a question mark at the very end.

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His markings are what I always notice first. The rings on his flank look like the marks Grandad scratched onto card before he cut a pattern, and the zigzag teeth along his spine run the length of him like a saw blade. Dots march down the tail in pairs. Mr Okonedo, who delivers the sacks, says a cat marked like that carries the pattern of the hill it was born on. I told him Tallow was born in the bin store behind the Co-op, and he said that was probably the same hill, once you went far enough back.

At five the first van grinds up the high street. I go to shape the tins, and when I turn round the cabinet lid is empty. There is a small cough from the rack by the oven, and there he is, folded into the cooling tray with his tail wound round himself in the same spiral it was drawn in. He has no intention of moving.

I pull the first loaves out and the crust sings in the cold air. He opens one eye at the smell, then shuts it again, satisfied that the morning has been started properly for him.