Bold black tribal-style cat face design with swirling linework on a white background, shown as a flash drawing with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal cat face design

Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical cat face is drawn in solid black with bold tribal-style linework, including pointed ears, swirled brow and cheek lines, and interlaced curves that frame the eyes and muzzle. The design is shown flat on a plain white background with no skin visible. Its strong negative spaces and curling lines give it a balanced, emblematic composition.

Cat Cat face Swirl Spiral Eye Whiskers

Find an artist for this

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

Shut that door, you're letting the fen in. Right. Where was I? Ah, the cat. Her name was Sorrel and she belonged to the eel-man at Coldharbour, though she never once came when he called. Her ears stood up like the points of a crown, and the marks on her face curled round and round like the eddies under the sluice gate, so the children swore she was reading the water.

Keep reading

The winter the bank gave way, the flood came in the dark, quick as a dog. Nobody saw it coming except Sorrel, who came up the lane at midnight yowling at every door until the eel-man's wife woke and lit the lamp. She led them out along the old causeway, stopping where the stones were sound, pressing her weight down on each one and turning back to make sure they followed the curl of her tail and not the straight road, which was already gone.

They lost the mill and four sheep. Nobody lost a child. The eel-man built her a bed of sacking by the range and she never once slept in it. Every spring after, when the first thaw came, she'd walk to the bottom of the lane and sit with her face to the sluice, eyes half closed, listening.

So when you come to Coldharbour and see the old boards by the church, look in the mud beside them and you'll find small paw prints, always going the same way. Mind your step on the causeway. She's still checking it.