Black line tattoo of the Catbus from My Neighbour Totoro with a small Totoro on its head and a soot sprite on a sign, on the outer thigh.

Catbus and Totoro outline on a thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black outline tattoo of the Catbus, with its grinning face, raised paws and striped tail, shows a small Totoro sitting on its head and a leaf above. A bell hangs from its neck, and a bus sign with a soot sprite is held in one paw. The linework is bold and even, with no shading or colour, and the design fills the length of the thigh.

Thigh Totoro Cat Leaf Bell Soot sprite

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell Harrow had been waiting at the stile stop since the rain cleared, her satchel heavy with bramble jam and her good boots ruined by the lane. The timetable nailed to the post said the last bus left at six. Everyone in Hollin Clough knew that was a lie told to tourists, because the bus came when somebody needed it, not when the council said so.

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The bell reached her before the lights did, a small brass note slipping down through the hazel. Then the bus came round the bend, long and striped like a tabby stretched out on a warm wall, its face split in a grin wide enough to show every tooth. A round grey shape sat on its roof, holding a leaf over its head like an umbrella. Along the gutter, black soot sprites were climbing into the sign box, rattling it. The destination board read MILL GATE in careful capitals.

"Where do you go, after the mill?" Nell asked, because her grandmother had always said you should ask a cat a question before you climbed aboard.

The bus lowered one paw to the verge, and the sprite in the sign box blinked at her. Nell stepped up. The seats were warm and smelled of wet fur and cut grass, and the bell swung gently at the window as they rolled through the trees, past the drowned chapel and the sheep that never looked up. Somewhere in the dark, the leaf-carrying shape hummed a tune her grandmother used to sing over the stove.

They stopped at the gap in the wall below Harrow Farm, where the gate had been painted red since before she was born. Nell climbed down. The door hissed shut behind her, and when she turned, the bus was only a striped shadow sliding back into the hazels. Her grandmother's light was on in the kitchen. In her coat pocket, the little brass bell was still ringing.