Black tribal linework design of a stylised cat face with pointed ears and tapering swirls, shown on a plain white background.

Tribal cat face design

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a stylised cat or feline face built from bold black tribal linework on a plain white background. The lines taper to sharp points and curl into swirls around the eyes and ears, with a tapering pointed shape forming the nose and a long, flame-like element extending downward from the chin. The design is symmetrical, uses only solid black ink, and is composed centrally with no shading.

Cat Tribal Ear Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the cat under the clock at Hallam Road at twenty to midnight, sitting on the bench where the lost-property box used to be, its ears pinned flat against the wind coming through the footbridge. Nobody on the night roster owns a cat. The signalman says it came in with the fog, and the buffet woman says it always leaves before the milk train, so you have stopped asking and started leaving it a saucer of cold tea.

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Its ears are wrong for a moggy. They rise into points so sharp they seem to cut the light from the platform lamps, and the swirls at its eyes curl back like ribbon someone has tugged. You have spent eleven winters checking tickets and sweeping grit from the lines, and you have never seen an animal read the departure board the way this one does, tail wrapped round its paws, working the timetable from the bottom up.

On the third night you tell it about your sister in Carlisle, the one who stopped writing. You say things out loud you would never say to the depot. The cat listens with its head tilted to one side. Then the signal bell rings for a train that is not on any board, and the cat stands, stretches into a long flame of a shape down its spine, and walks along the edge of the platform towards the dark where the rails bend out of sight.

In the morning the saucer is empty and there is a ticket on the bench, single, to Carlisle, dated for tomorrow. Someone has pressed a small pointed face into the corner where the stamp should go. You still have not decided whether to use it.