Black tribal-style cat leaping from a shaded purple lotus towards a small blue butterfly, tattooed on skin.

Tribal cat leaping from a lotus

Mixed · Photo

A black tribal-patterned cat with a curled tail leaps upwards from a shaded purple lotus flower sitting on rippling water lines. A small blue butterfly floats in the upper right of the design. The cat is solid black with white-grey stripe detailing, while the lotus uses soft purple shading and the butterfly has blue wings.

Cat Lotus Butterfly Water

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cat came over the river at first light, the way it always had, and I stopped pretending to check my watch. From the gate you could see the lotus beds lying on the brown water between the two flags, and the cat would crouch on the nearest bloom with its tail curled over its back like a question nobody had asked, then spring. It never touched the water. It went from petal to petal in a line that sent rings fanning out on either side, and it landed on our side of the wire with the dignity of a woman stepping off a late train.

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Dmitri in the booth called it a smuggler. He said it had the look. I said smugglers carried things, and this one carried nothing but a small blue butterfly that rode above its head like a lantern, always the same one, always just out of reach of the dogs. Once a month the cat stopped at the barrier and waited, tail twitching, until I lifted the arm by hand. I never once wrote down what passed through.

Last winter the river rose and tore the lotus beds loose. I searched the mud for a week, sure the cat had drowned. Then one grey morning it leapt from a bare post in the middle of the current, legs working at nothing, and the butterfly came down and settled on my sleeve. I looked at the far bank, where nobody had ever been waiting for it. Then I looked at the cat, dripping and furious, and I opened the logbook to a blank page and let them both through.