Colour neo-trad tattoo of a winged white cat with a red ear and a gold keyhole, set against a purple and yellow moon on an arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged cat with keyhole on an arm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A white, winged cat-like creature with a red ear and red-rimmed eye sits in front of a pale yellow moon on a purple wash background. A gold keyhole plate and a dark chain or beaded line hang from its body, and the wing and tail trail off in grey shading. Bold outlines, soft watercolour-style backgrounds and vivid red, purple and yellow inks define the composition.

Neo-trad Forearm Cat Keyhole Moon Chain Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The year the snow came before Martinmas, Mab Tennant's grey cat began climbing onto the byre roof on full-moon nights and sitting there with its wings half open. Her neighbours said it was a bad omen. Mab said it was only cold and wanted a better view of the sky.

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Then the frost cracked the granary lock, and the sack door hung open onto the dark. The cat came down the ladder with a small brass keyhole plate swinging from a beaded chain at its neck, though nobody had ever seen it wear anything before. It walked along the rafters and stopped in front of the open door, looking back at Mab with green eyes rimmed in red, the way a cat looks when it has been awake too long.

Mab asked what it wanted. The cat tilted its head, tapped the brass plate with one paw, and went back up into the moonlight to sit on the ridge. By morning the lock had been mended with a key Mab did not own, the grain was dry, and the wind had dropped.

She never learnt who had done the mending. Each full moon after that she left a saucer of milk on the step, and each morning it was empty and the frost in the yard was marked with small, neat prints that led to the gate and went no further. The cat kept the key, Mab used to say, and she kept the milk, and between the two of them the farm came through every winter.