Tribal big cat tattoo on shoulder

Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A large tribal-style design of a big cat, with a stylised head near the shoulder and a striped tail curling down the upper arm, is tattooed in solid blue-purple ink. The linework is bold and mostly solid, with flame-like spikes rising from the top and back edges and areas of fill giving the design its weight. The ink is shown against lighter skin in a plain indoor setting, with the subject's shoulder and upper arm filling most of the frame.

Shoulder Upper arm Big cat Tiger Flame Tribal Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had turned the tarpaulins the colour of wet slate, and you were still haggling with Mr Okafor over the price of a brass desk lamp when the cat came out from under his stall. It was a big tabby, heavy in the shoulder, with a tail that lifted and curled like a fern unrolling. Its markings were dark and angular, sharp as cut paper, and where the streetlight caught them they looked almost blue.

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"That one's been circling since Tuesday," Mrs Dunmore called from the fish counter across the aisle. "Won't take food from anyone who's not closing up." You tore the corner off a tin of pilchards you had meant to take home and set it on the cobbles. The cat looked at the fish, then at you, then at the cold lamp in your hands, as if it were the one doing the bargaining. It did not eat. It sat down in the puddle and waited, its tail coiled around its paws like a flame that had decided to stay put.

You left the lamp with Mr Okafor, who laughed and said you were a soft touch, and you walked the long way home past the shuttered bakery. When you looked back from the corner the market was dark except for one bare bulb over a stall of tin toys, and the cat was still there, a shape of ink against the wet stones.

In the morning the rain had stopped. The pilchards were gone, the lamp was still on Mr Okafor's counter, and the puddles in the market square held a sky the exact colour of that cat's stripes.