# A cut that reads from across a car park

> About a centimetre is taken from one ear under anaesthetic during neutering — a mark meant to be read at a glance by someone who'll never touch that cat again.

August 20, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-tipped-ear

A cat's head, straight on, fills the chest as one solid distressed white shape — eyes, nose and
mouth cut out as voids rather than drawn in. The ear on the viewer's left rises to a sharp natural
point. The ear on the viewer's right stops dead, cut off level and straight. Nothing on the print
explains why.

Anyone who needs to know already knows. That's the entire design.

## What does the flat-cut ear actually mean?

It means this cat has already been trapped, neutered and released.

About a centimetre is removed from the ear in a single straight cut while the cat is under
anaesthetic for the neuter — a small, deliberate scar rather than an accident of a fight or a
notched ear healed rough. Anyone doing trap-neuter-return work can read that flat edge from a
distance and know, before setting a trap, that this particular cat doesn't need catching again.

## Why the ear, and not a collar or a tag?

Because he's already under anaesthetic for the neuter, so the mark costs nothing beyond what's
already happening.

A collar can be lost within a week and a tag can fall off in undergrowth; the tip heals into a
permanent, visible feature of the animal rather than an accessory riding along on top of him. It
adds no separate procedure, no follow-up visit, no extra handling — it happens inside the surgery
that was going to happen regardless.

### Which ear it is, and why that isn't fixed

The left ear is the more common convention — it's what Alley Cat Allies and a lot of programmes
built on that model use — but it isn't universal. Some organisations tip the right ear instead, and
some use the side to encode sex, right for female and left for male. That means the mark only
decodes correctly if you know whose convention produced it, which is exactly how it works out in the
world: a useful signal to the people running that particular programme, and closer to noise to
anyone reading it against a different one.

## Does making this need anyone's permission?

No, if it's a drawing of your own cat's own ear.

There's no character, logo or studio artwork involved — it's a physical fact about a specific
animal, drawn from your own observation. That's a different situation from putting a trap-neuter
organisation's actual wordmark or badge on a shirt, which would be their artwork to license, the way
any organisation's mark is.

## Who actually wears this — only the people who do the trapping?

Trappers and colony carers first, but it reaches further than that.

[Anyone fostering a cat who came through that process](/stories/foster-carer-shirt) inherits
the tip along with the animal, whether or not they did any of the trapping themselves. It also fits
[a cat who arrived on his own terms, no adoption paperwork attached](/stories/the-cat-who-moved-in) —
the tipped ear is sometimes the only clue anyone has to a history nobody actually witnessed.

## Doesn't an asymmetric ear just look like a mistake in the drawing?

To somebody who doesn't know the convention, it can. To somebody who does, it reads correctly and
immediately.

That gap is the whole point rather than a flaw to fix. This owes nothing to
[the register most cat merchandise reaches for](/stories/cat-shirt-that-isnt-cute) — it isn't
trying to look cute or finished to everyone, it's trying to be legible to the specific people who
need it to be. A decoration has to look intentional to any viewer. A mark only has to look
intentional to the ones who can read it.

## Does it print well?

Better as flat colour than as anything softer.

The whole design rests on one crisp edge — where the point ends and the straight cut begins — so a
soft or feathered outline would blur exactly the detail that carries the meaning. It works best as a
single distressed shape, either white ink on slate, charcoal or forest green, or the reverse: dark
ink on a pale ground. One colour is enough; a second only gives the eye somewhere else to look.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the cat at [JustOG](/) — which ear, how distressed the shape should be, and how large
across the chest. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and
it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Nobody at the car park needs the explanation. That's rather the achievement.