Colourful watercolour-style tattoo of a sitting cat on a stack of books, with loose ink linework, on the forearm.

Watercolour cat on stacked books

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A cat sits upright on a stack of three books, drawn with loose, sketchy black outlines. The shading is soft and translucent, with pink, orange, green and blue washes bleeding past the lines, and splashes of colour trail down below the books. The composition is vertical and centred on the forearm, with the cat's head turned to the left.

Forearm Cat Book Stack of books Sitting cat

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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

Dear Nell, the cat has taken up residence on the ledgers again, the three fat ones your father kept for the picking dates, and I've stopped moving her. She sits square on top like she's been hired to guard them. Mrs Pargeter from the cider barn says a cat on the books brings luck at the press, so I suppose we are lucky, or at least well read.

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The late apples are coming in heavy this year, Cox and Bramley both dropping before the ladders are even out. Tom has been up since five sorting windfalls into crates, and the whole yard smells of sugar going brown. I set the paint pots out on the shed step to dry the morning after the rain, and when I came back the cat had walked through the blue and then straight across the pink, leaving little paw prints all down the sill. I was cross for almost a minute. Then I laughed, because it looked as though the orchard had got into a paintbox and decided to make a picture of itself.

Anyway, I wanted you to know I've decided to keep the shed as it is. The books stay, the cat stays, the stains stay. Come at the start of October if you can. Bring your good brushes and we'll paint the wall where the splashes run.

Love, Marian