Black silhouette paw prints in a diagonal trail on a white background, a tattoo design with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Trail of paw prints design

Black and grey · Flash

A diagonal trail of six solid black dog or cat style paw prints, each with a large main pad and four toe pads, shrinking in size towards the top of the image. The shapes are flat black fills with crisp edges and no shading or linework inside them. The design sits centred on a plain white background with no skin or other elements visible.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time you reach the companionway the flour tin is empty and Cook is shouting your name loud enough to wake the second mate. You did not spill it. The ship's cat did, or rather she walked straight through it on her way to the hatch, four neat pads and a fifth spot where she paused to think, and now the whole length of the galley deck is printed with her going somewhere else.

Keep reading

You follow the trail with a lantern held low. It leads past the coal bunker, over the hatch coaming and out onto the wet well deck, where the spray has been working at the planks since Falmouth. The prints grow smaller the further they climb towards the bow, as though she is shrinking into the dark ahead of you and taking the last of the light with her. Somewhere below, the sea knocks against the hull like a patient man at a door.

The trail stops at the bulwark, where the rail is slick with salt. Beyond it there is only grey water and the long pale scar of the wake. You expect to find her there, sulking on a coil of rope, but the rope is bare. Instead you notice a second set of prints crossing hers, larger and older, leading from the rail back towards the galley. They belong to the mate, who has been slipping out on the night watch to leave scraps of herring by the bulwark since the day you sailed.

When Cook asks who did it, you tell him the cat. It is only half a lie. You walk back to the scullery with the lantern swinging, and the flour dust settles on your boots, and you leave the mate's secret where it is, printed in the salt for anyone willing to look.

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