Illustration of a hairless cat with black and grey tattoo designs of roses, a swallow, a wing and '7 Lives' script, wearing a maroon bow with a skull charm.

Tattooed hairless cat with rose and swallow

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

A cream-coloured hairless cat sits in profile, wearing a maroon bow with a skull charm, while its body is covered in tattoo designs. The designs include a large rose and smaller rose, a swallow, a wing, script lettering reading '7 Lives' and small stars, drawn in fine black pencil-style linework with light grey shading. The pale pink background and warm cream tones dominate, with yellow eyes and the red-maroon bow as the only other strong colours.

Neo-trad Traditional Cat Rose Swallow Wing Script Star Skull Bow

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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

You have already spent three of your lives on Cressida House, and the building keeps asking for more. The lift swallowed you once, between the eighth and ninth floors, and you yowled until Mrs Adeyemi pried the doors apart with a broom handle and a language you pretended not to understand. The balcony rails are wide enough for a cat with ambition and too narrow for good sense. Each morning you sit on the sill of flat 14 and stare down at the car park as though it owes you money.

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The swallow arrives in April, the same week the hawthorns along the access road go white. She builds her cup of mud under the lip of the balcony, and you watch her from the sill with the patience of a creature who has never been short of time. Nell, who lives on the other side of the wall with her radio and her spider plants, says the bird is called Still Dreaming, because she has decided that's what the bird is doing. Nell laughs at most things you do, which you consider a reasonable response to your genius.

In late June the wind comes up off the estate and throws the balcony door wide. You are on the rail before anyone can stop you, and the drop is seven storeys of grey concrete and wheelie bins. You do not fall. The swallow dives past your ear, close enough to make you flinch, and then you are back inside, shaking, with Nell's hand flat on your back saying your name like a question.

The count is wrong now. Nell says it's a number people say, not one cats keep. You lick your shoulder and do not argue. Next spring you will sit on the sill again, a life lighter or the same, and wait for the mud cup to dry under the lip. The swallow will come back to it, and you will be there to see her come.