Black linework tattoo of a stylised cat with a curled tail and collar with a pendant, on the upper arm.

Stylised black cat on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black outline tattoo of a stylised cat standing with its back arched and tail curled upward. The cat has a simple face with narrow eyes, a triangular nose, a collar and a round pendant, and the body is drawn with smooth, tapering lines. The design is in black ink only, set against the upper arm with plain skin around it.

Upper arm Cat Tail Collar Pendant Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the cat has taken to sleeping on the lamp locker again, which the cook says is bad luck and the bosun says is the only sensible thing aboard. I have stopped arguing. She came up from the hold at Valparaíso thin as a rope end, and nobody could tell me whose she was, so the carpenter cut her a collar from old harness leather and hung the brass bell from the spare binnacle on it.

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Her bell is how we know where she is at night. The men say she only walks the rail when the weather is turning. Last Tuesday she stood on the taffrail with her back arched like a bow drawn tight and her tail curled over her shoulders, staring at nothing, and the mate swore she was counting squalls. Half the crew laughed. I did not. I have seen her do it three times now, always an hour before the glass drops.

Yesterday the wind came round to the south-west and we took in the topsails in a hurry. In the scramble Harry Voss lost his footing on the wet ratlines and went over the rail, and the watch had him by the belt before the sea could take him. What I remember most is the bell ringing sharp under all that noise, and the cat sitting on the hatch cover watching me with her narrow eyes, as if she had expected it all along.

Harry is asleep now with a bandaged wrist and a tot of the purser's rum he has not earned. I have decided she stays with us to Falmouth. If anyone asks why she is a good omen, I will say it is because she rings before the trouble and not after. Write to me at the Falmouth post office. Tell the girls their father is coming home with a cat.