A bold black blackwork tattoo of a yin yang design with a black cat and a white cat inside a circle, on the side of a torso above the ribs.

Yin yang cats on the side ribs

Blackwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black circle contains a yin yang design made from a black cat and a negative-space white cat, with the cats' curled bodies and heads forming the two halves. The linework is clean and the black ink is fully saturated, with the white cat shown as untattooed skin. The tattoo is centred in the frame on the side of the torso, with the rest of the body and a dark garment partly visible.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The black cat has taken to sleeping in the hollow of the old oak at the forest edge, the one the lightning split last spring, and the white one follows him there every evening as though they agreed it between them. Mrs Pryce at the shop says they are brothers from the same litter at Dunmore Farm, though nobody can say which was born first. Bramble, the black one, hisses at the milk van, then rubs himself against the gatepost. Frost sits in the frosted grass and watches the lane as if she were expecting a letter.

Father would have laughed at me for writing about cats, but you know how the village gets in winter. The bakery shuts at four and the men talk about the new road as if it were a stranger who had moved in next door. So I walk the cats to the trees each dusk and wait for them to come back round the hedge in their own time.

Last Tuesday the snow came in sideways and Bramble did not come home. I went into the wood with the lantern and called until my voice gave out. I found him curled at the root of the oak, and Frost was lying tight against his back, her tail wrapped over his nose, the snow settling on both of them. I left them be. I did not want to be the one who came between them.

They were home by morning, sitting on the step as though nothing had happened. Write back soon, and tell me whether the rooks have returned to the church roof.

Love, Margaret

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