Step into the Jim Henson Company’s Los Angeles office and a gang of doozers from Fraggle Rock greets you at the front desk. Fozzie Bear peers out from a filing cabinet, Sesame Street’s Big Bird poses in a giant rococo frame, and one of Maurice Sendak’s wild things squats on a corner cabinet, hairs sprouting from his nose.
But among these American puppet idols hanging around the workshop of Henson’s company is an ornament that will delight fans of Japan’s Studio Ghibli. It is the prowling catbus from its 1988 animated film fantasy My Neighbour Totoro. For the uninitiated, that’s exactly what it sounds like: a bus with fluffed-up tail, furry seats and headlight eyes that speeds on to the screen, breaking into a Cheshire grin and giving a wild miaow.
