Two colour neo-traditional tattoos side by side: a hairless cat with a pearl necklace on an upper arm, and a Siamese cat in an ornate gold frame with white flowers on a thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two neo-traditional cat tattoos on arm and thigh

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The left tattoo shows a hairless cat head with a pearl necklace and a jewelled brow detail, set against a large yellow and orange fan-shaped motif. The right tattoo shows a Siamese cat's face framed by an ornate gold border with white flowers and green leaves at its base. Both use bold outlines, soft shading and saturated colour, with the subjects centred in the composition.

Neo-trad Upper arm Thigh Cat Sphynx cat Pearl Necklace Frame Flower Leaves Fan

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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

The fan arrives first, folded in brown paper, and you know before you open it that the widow on Carrick Holm has finally sent for her cat's portrait. You are the only painter on the island who can make a fan open like a sunrise and still fit in a crate for the mainland boat. Mrs Abernethy's sphynx, Duchess, has been dead a fortnight, and she wants her face kept.

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Duchess had no fur, only wrinkled grey skin the colour of wet slate, and she wore pearls every day, a string knotted at the throat because the widow said a bare animal needed dressing. The pearls were real. You had watched them tick against the stone step each morning while the gulls quarrelled over the bins at the harbour, and you had learned to keep your brush hand steady.

On your last visit the widow pressed a small brass key into your palm and said the cat had taken a liking to you. You did not ask what it opened. Behind the dresser in the back parlour there was a cupboard lined with green velvet, and on the velvet lay the pearls, restrung on silk, with a gold clasp that had never once been fastened.

You paint the eyes last, as you always do, so the fan cannot outshine them. When the boat leaves on Thursday the portrait goes with it, wrapped in oilcloth. You keep the key on your own string, because the widow never asked for it back, and the island has never been good at giving things up.