Three small solid black paw print tattoos sit on an ankle above a black high-heeled shoe, with rolled denim jeans beside them.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three paw prints on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Three small solid black paw prints are arranged in a loose diagonal on the side of a bare ankle. The prints are simple filled shapes with no shading, and the ink is crisp against the skin. A black high-heeled shoe and rolled blue denim frame the tattoo against a weathered wooden deck.

Ankle Paw print Paw Animal Footprint

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The cat has taken to walking the gallery rail again, and I have stopped shouting at her. Last Tuesday she left three prints in the fresh whitewash on the north stair, one behind the other, pressed deep enough that Mr Pryce swore someone had climbed up in the night with boots full of sand. It was only Mab, though she walked about it like a magistrate, and I spent an hour with a rag and a bucket trying to decide whether to scrub them away.

I didn't. I let them dry. Every morning since, I have climbed past them and counted them, the way you counted the gulls on the Ness before they lifted. Three is a strange number for a cat. She only ever seems to set down three at a time when she is thinking, one paw lifted as if she isn't sure the step is hers.

The letter from the Board came on Friday. They want the light automated by spring, and the relief keeper's house sold. I read it twice at the table with the kettle going cold. Then I went out onto the wooden deck with the tide running in over the rocks and found Mab sitting by the door, watching me with her eyes half shut, as if she already knew the answer.

So I am writing to say you should come home before the summer, and bring the good boots, because the stair will need sweeping and I have decided the prints can stay until you see them. Mab will show you where she likes to walk. She always did have a way of leaving something behind for us to follow.

Love, Ruth