Caturday felid trifecta: Japan’s Totoro catbuses , GoPro on a cheetah, and Dangerous Cats

May 28, 2016 • 8:45 am

The 1988 Japanese anime movie My Neighbor Totoro contains a wonderful sequence in which the children ride a Cat Bus. (The film, by the way, is considered one of the best children’s movies of all time, is highly rated by moviemakers and critics like Roger Ebert and Terry Gilliam, and I’m going to watch it.) First, the Cat Bus sequence below; do watch it as it’s lovely:

https://vimeo.com/15166847

Based on this movie, the Japanese, who love their cats, have created a number of real cat buses that you can see at kotaku.com. Here are but a few; to to the site to see many more:

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There’s even a Totoro motorcycle:

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Savanna. a tame cheetah from the Cinncinnati Zoo, allowed a GoPro camera to be mounted on her, and although the video quality when she’s running is poor, you can get an idea of how fast these things go.

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Finally, Matthew found a tw**t that claims the cats used to be much worse; they’re clearly following the theme of The Better Angels of Our Nature, becoming more moral with time. Click to enlarge and then click again to see the individual pictures.

h/t: Matthew Cobb, Michael

27 thoughts on “Caturday felid trifecta: Japan’s Totoro catbuses , GoPro on a cheetah, and Dangerous Cats”

  3. Don’t delay, see Totoro a soon as possible! One of my favourite films of all time, the bus stop in the rain scene (when the catbus makes it’s first appearance) is pure Miyazaki magic.

    1. The first time I saw that scene, I thought “Who would allow two young girls to wait by themselves at an isolated bus stop after dark?” – but then of course remembered that the film is set in 1950s rural Japan. I’ve loved every Miyazaki film I’ve watched so far, but I think my favorite is Spirited Away, with My Neighbor Totoro a close second.

      For the crafts-enabled, there’s a free pattern on Ravelry for a crocheted Catbus. I’ve crocheted several Totoros (including a largish one with a leaf hat) and soot sprites, but haven’t tried making a Catbus yet. Maybe someday!

      1. apologies…I must have been half asleep. You did state that it was My Neighbor T. My library has it;-)

    2. Yes
      “Here is a children’s film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap.”
      http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-my-neighbor-totoro-1993

  5. I am surprised how much slow axis as soon as we call it is involved in the running of the chea I am surprised how much slow axis as soon as we call it is involved in the running of the cheetah. See if years to have a need for larger oscillations in order to strike the ground and maintain her speed.

  6. Did the animator take magic mushrooms and read Alice in Wonderland before drawing the storyboards?

    1. No more than normal. For an animator.
      Check out some of the Studio Ghibili stuff if you want to speculate about animator’s (and children’s book writer’s) consumption of recreational pharmaceuticals.
      My mad (sensu paranoid delusional psychosis) artist friend keeps on playing with animation. That’s going to be … interesting.

  7. To gain insight into how Miyazaki works may I suggest the 2014 documentary “The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness,” which follows the great man from creation of the storyboard, choosing voice actors, musical scoring and post production of his final movie “The Wind Rises” (he has retired from filmmaking, or so he says). A fascinating sidelight in this documentary is Miyazaki’s problematic relationship with another wonderful anime filmaker Isao Takahata (Tale of the Princess Kaguya) as they simultaneously complete their final films for Studio Ghibli. A somewhat bittersweet meditation on the ending of long, illustrious careers. My vote for best Miyazaki is “Spirited Away,” which won the Academy Award for best animated feature in 2002. An extraordinary work in so many ways.

  8. Looks like Victorians didn’t like cats.

    So, where they:
    – Control freaks?
    – Disliking nature in general?
    – Disliking animals in general?
    – Disliking cats especially?

    Do we have any historian reading this thread?

    1. I don’t think it’s true that Victorians didn’t like cats. Animal lover Queen Victoria had Persian cats, and that of course started a fad for having pet cats and treating them well.

      Though putting clothes on cats for modesty’s sake doesn’t seem too kind by modern standards. Victorians put clothes on everything, including a baby orangutan at the zoo.

    2. Perhaps in Victorian times cats (and d*gs) were seen as more dangerous because there were no antibiotics to treat scratches and bites? Kitty clawing your hand could kill you.

      1. They also didn’t have “germ theory”, and were all too familiar with flea-ridden rats and mice in their houses and food stores.

        Kitty clawing your hand could kill you.

        Strange, I got clawed by lots of animals – domesticated and not so domesticated – and hundreds of bits of vicious vegetation (“blackthorn” in particular – bloody vicious stuff, and we had 60 acres of it to manage). While I had occasional infections, I never had anything that I felt the need for getting antibiotics for, and only rarely for iodine, washing alcohol, or plasters.
        Do people really take even a cat scratch to the emergency room for irrigation and antibiotics these days? No wonder the health service is suffering.

        1. My mother did get cat scratch fever when they were living in either Nigeria or Sierra Leone. From our own sweet kitteh. Her arm swelled up to bigger than her leg. And I got a horrible case of all-over-the-body ringworm when I was 7 and living in Martinique. Had to have my head shaved and it took about a year to get rid of. From yet another family kitteh.

          1. Is ringwom treatable with antibiotics? Nope, fungal.
            I’m somewhat more careful when I’m working in the tropics – basically because the wildlife is considerably more aggressive then in the temperate zones. And that’s why people needed to pay me to go to the tropics to work. But I do still think that in the temperate zones people are excessively afraid of pathogens and infections. After all, thousands of generations of our ancestors survived without modern medicine.

          2. Yes, fungal. Many treatments were attempted (creams, salves, etc. from the U.S. army base in Puerto Rico) and did nothing. Finally a local French Martiniquais doctor gave me some pills which made me throw up but took care of the ringworm. Years later a US pediatrician told my mother that it was lucky that said pills didn’t kill me, along with the fungus. Not sure what was in them – arsenic perhaps??
            I think a couple of “rings” are easy to treat, but since I most likely slept with the infected kitty, in the tropics, this was a bad case. Poor kitteh went to meet her MakeR.

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