James Bowen - A Street Cat Named Bob

Understandably, it was all a bit intimidating for Bob. It was unfamiliar territory for him – well, I assumed it was. I couldn’t be sure, of course. As we picked our way along I could tell from his slightly uptight body language and the way he kept looking up at me that he was uneasy. So I decided to take one of my normal short cuts through the back streets to get to Covent Garden.

‘Come on, Bob, let’s get you out of the crowds,’ I said.

Even then he wasn’t 100 per cent happy. Weaving our way through the throng, he kept shooting me looks as if to say he wasn’t quite sure about this. After only a few yards I could tell that he wanted me to pick him up.

‘All right, but don’t make a habit of it,’ I said, gathering him up and placing him on my shoulders just as I’d done crossing Tottenham High Road. He’d soon settled into a comfortable spot, at a slight angle across my right shoulder blade, with his front paws placed on the top of my arm, looking out like the occupant of the bird’s nest on some pirate ship. I couldn’t help smiling inwardly. I must look a bit like Long John Silver, except I had a puss rather than a parrot sailing along with me.

He certainly seemed to be very comfortable there. I could feel him purring lightly as we walked through the throng, across New Oxford Street and into the smaller streets leading down towards Covent Garden.

The crowds had thinned out by now and after a while I began to forget Bob was there. Instead I started to immerse myself in the usual thoughts that went through my mind on the way to work. Was the weather going to be good enough for me to get a solid five hours’ busking? Answer: Probably. It was overcast, but the clouds were white and high in the sky. There wasn’t much chance of rain. What sort of crowd would there be in Covent Garden? Well, it was getting close to Easter so there were a lot of tourists. How long would it take me to make the twenty or thirty pounds I needed to get me – and now Bob – through the next few days? Well, it had taken me the best part of five hours the previous day. Maybe it would be better today, maybe it wouldn’t. That was the thing with busking; you just never knew.

I was mulling all these things over still when I was suddenly aware of something.

Ordinarily, no one would engage or even exchange a look with me. I was a busker and this was London. I didn’t exist. I was a person to be avoided, shunned even. But as I walked down Neal Street that afternoon almost every person we passed was looking at me. Well, more to the point, they were looking at Bob.

One or two had quizzical, slightly confused looks on their faces, which was understandable, I guess. It must have looked slightly incongruous, a tall, long-haired bloke walking along with a large, ginger tom on his shoulders. Not something you see every day – even on the streets of London.

Most people, however, were reacting more warmly. The moment they saw Bob their faces would break into broad smiles. It wasn’t long before people were stopping us.

‘Ah, look at you two,’ said one well-dressed, middle-aged lady laden down with shopping bags. ‘He’s gorgeous. Can I stroke him?’

‘Of course,’ I said, thinking it would be a one-off event.

She plonked down her bags and placed her face right up to his.

‘What a lovely fellow you are, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘He is a boy, isn’t he?’

‘He is,’ I said.

‘Isn’t he good to sit there on your shoulders like that? Don’t see that very often. He must really trust you.’

I’d barely said goodbye to the lady when we were approached by two young girls. They’d seen the lady making a fuss of Bob so I guess they thought they could do the same. They turned out to be Swedish teenagers on holiday.

‘What is his name? Can we take his picture?’ they said, snapping away with their cameras the instant I nodded.

‘His name’s Bob,’ I said.

‘Ah, Bob. Cool.’

We chatted for a minute or two. One of them had a cat herself and produced a picture of it for me. I had to politely excuse myself after a couple of minutes, otherwise they would have spent hours drooling over him.

We carried on towards the bottom of Neal Street in the direction of Long Acre. But the going was slow. No sooner had the latest admirer gone away than the same thing was happening again – and again. I’d barely go three feet without being stopped by someone who wanted to stroke or talk to Bob.

The novelty soon wore off. At this rate I wasn’t going to get anywhere, I began to realise. It normally took me not much more than ten minutes to get from my normal bus stop to my pitch at Covent Garden. But it had already taken me twice that because everyone had seemed to want to stop and talk to Bob. It was a bit ridiculous.

By the time we got to Covent Garden it was almost an hour after I normally got set up.

Thanks a lot, Bob, you’ve probably cost me a few quid in lost earnings , I heard myself saying in my head, half-jokingly.

It was a serious issue though. If he was going to slow me down this much every day, I really couldn’t let him follow me on to the bus again, I thought. It wasn’t long before I was thinking a bit differently.

By this point, I’d been busking around Covent Garden for about a year and a half. I generally started at about two or three in the afternoon and carried on until around eight in the evening. It was the best time to capture tourists and people finishing off their shopping or on the way home from work. At the weekends I would go earlier and do lunchtimes. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday I’d carry on until quite late, trying to take advantage of the extra numbers of Londoners that hung around at the end of the working week.

I’d learned to be flexible in finding an audience. My main pitch was on a patch of pavement directly outside Covent Garden tube station on James Street. I’d work that until about 6.30p.m., when the main evening rush hour was at its peak. Then for the last couple of hours I’d walk around all the pubs in Covent Garden where people were standing outside smoking and drinking. In the summer months this could be quite productive as office workers unwound after their day’s work with a pint and a fag in the evening sunshine.

It could be a bit risky at times. Some people took exception to me approaching them and could be rude and even abusive at times. ‘Piss off you scrounger’; ‘Get yourself a proper job you lazy f******.’ That kind of stuff. But that came with the territory. I was used to it. There were plenty of people who were happy to hear me play a song then slip me a quid.

Busking at James Street was a bit of a gamble as well. Technically speaking, I wasn’t supposed to be there.

The Covent Garden area is divided up very specifically into areas when it comes to street people. It’s regulated by officials from the local council, an officious bunch that we referred to as Covent Guardians.

My pitch should have been on the eastern side of Covent Garden, near the Royal Opera House and Bow Street. That’s where the musicians were supposed to operate, according to the Covent Guardians. The other side of the piazza, the western side, was where the street performers were supposed to ply their trade. The jugglers and entertainers generally pitched themselves under the balcony of the Punch and Judy pub where they usually found a rowdy audience willing to watch them.

James Street, where I had begun playing, was meant to be the domain of the human statues. There were a few of them around, one guy dressed as Charlie Chaplin used to do quite well but only worked now and again. But it was normally clear so I had taken advantage and made it my own little patch. I knew there was always the risk of getting moved along by the Covent Guardians but I took my chances and it usually paid off. The volume of people coming out of the tube station there was huge. If only one in a thousand of them made a ‘drop’ then I could do OK.