Black and grey tattoo of three cat silhouettes across a back, filled with ornamental patterns, a rose and spiral designs.

Three cat silhouettes on a back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Three cat silhouettes sit side by side, each filled with a different motif: ornate floral and paisley-style patterns on the left, a realistically shaded rose in the centre, and a spiral and geometric pattern on the right. The outlines and fills are rendered in fine black linework and dense solid black areas, with soft grey shading in the rose. The cats are evenly spaced across the skin, with their curled tails sweeping downward, and the photograph is taken in black and white.

Blackwork Botanical Back Cat Rose Paisley Spiral Floral pattern Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Gilmour House had been broken since March, so I was carrying Mum's sewing box up eleven flights when the door on the ninth floor opened and three cats came out to inspect me. Mrs Varga kept them the way other people keep houseplants. The first was Paisley, a tabby whose coat had gone lace-thin and silver at the ears. The second was Rosie, a fat ginger who ate the seed meant for the pigeons. The third, Shell, had a tail that curled like the inside of a snail, and she never let anyone pick her up.

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Mrs Varga had been a seamstress on Bethnal Green Road before the flats went up. She told me the cats had come from her husband's allotment, where he grew roses in neat rows and swore at the slugs. When he died she carved his initials into the balcony rail and filled the window boxes with whatever the council forgot to pull up.

I came back the next week with a bag of wool from Mum's stash, which she said was a fair price for a cup of tea. We sat on the balcony while the cats worked through the dusk in a row, tails flicking the same way. She traced each pattern for me with one finger: the lace, the rose, the spiral. Every one of them, she said, was only a way of telling the same animal apart from the others.

When I left, the lift was still broken and she was still at the door, watching me count the floors down. Shell, who never came to anyone, was sitting on my shoe.