Black and blue line drawing of a cat covered in traditional-style flash designs, including a rose, a dagger, a razor, a skull and crossbones and a milk bottle.

Tattooed cat flash drawing

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A cartoon cat lies curled up, its body covered in traditional-style tattoo flash motifs such as a rose, knuckledusters, a razor, daggers, a skull with crossbones, lightning bolts, a spiderweb and crossed bones. Phrases in English and Cyrillic lettering are placed around the body, and the cat has the letters ADAB on its cheek. The work is drawn in black outline with blue accents on the web, bottle and blades, and the composition fills the page edge to edge.

Traditional Cat Rose Dagger Knife Skull Crossbones Lightning Spiderweb Lettering Flash sheet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Barsik came aboard at Odessa with one ear torn and a temper to match, and by the time the ship cleared the Bosporus the crew had agreed he was the only honest thing on her. The bosun said so. The cook said so, usually while slipping him the top of the milk. The ship's dog, a yellow mongrel called Pilot, had been put ashore at Gibraltar for biting a stoker, and Barsik had never once been sorry for it. Dogs, he had decided, were a kind of lie.

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It was Yuri, the carpenter, who started the ink. He worked under the forecastle lamp with a needle filed from a sewing-machine part and ink mixed from lamp soot and a blue biro, and he never pricked the cat without first sending the cook for milk. Each night a new picture went on: a rose across the shoulder, a razor behind the ear, two daggers crossed over the flank, a skull grinning above its bones. A line of Cyrillic ran down the side, which Yuri swore meant Barsik and nothing rude. The name ADAB went on the cheek, and nobody could say why. Barsik slept through most of it.

Off Finisterre the gale came up out of the west and every tin in the galley rolled across the deck. The men lashed themselves to the rails and waited for the sea to finish with them. When the watch came below at dawn, Barsik was sitting on the hatch cover, wet to the skin, his tail upright and the knuckledusters on his chest shining in the grey light. The cook crossed himself and put down a saucer of milk.

At Hull a customs officer read the words across the cat's shoulder, all dogs are bastards, and asked Yuri whether it was a declaration. Yuri said it was the cat's, and the officer, who had a dog of his own at home, looked at the cheek for a long moment and waved them through. Barsik went down the gangway ahead of everyone, tail high, and did not look back at the dog handlers waiting by the van.