James Bowen - A Street Cat Named Bob

But then one day I got talking to the cat lady across the street.

‘You should go along to the Blue Cross van in Islington Green on a Thursday,’ she said. ‘They just charge for the cost of the chip. But make sure you get there early. There’s always a big queue.’

So I’d set off today nice and early to get to that morning’s clinic, which I knew ran from 10a.m. to noon.

As the cat lady had predicted, we discovered a lengthy queue when we got to Islington Green. A long line stretched down towards the big Waterstone’s bookshop. Luckily it was a bright, clear morning so it wasn’t a problem hanging around.

There was the usual collection you find in a situation like that; people with their cats in posh carriers, dogs trying to sniff each other and being a general nuisance. But it was quite sociable and it was certainly a smarter, more caring crowd than at the RSPCA where I’d first taken Bob to be checked out.

What was funny was that Bob was the only cat that wasn’t in a carrier, so he attracted a lot of attention – as usual. There were a couple of elderly ladies who were absolutely smitten and kept fussing over him.

After about an hour and a half queuing, Bob and I reached the front of the line where we were greeted by a young veterinary nurse with short bobbed hair.

‘How much will it cost to get him microchipped?’ I asked her.

‘It’s fifteen pounds,’ she replied.

It was pretty obvious from my appearance that I wasn’t exactly rolling in money. So she quickly added, ‘But you don’t have to pay it all up front. You can pay it off over a few weeks. Say two pounds a week, how’s that?’

‘Cool,’ I said, pleasantly surprised. ‘I can do that.’

She gave Bob a quick check, presumably to make sure he was in decent-enough health, which he was. He was looking a lot healthier these days, especially now that he had fully shed his winter coat. He was lean and really athletic.

She led us into the surgery where the vet was waiting. He was a young guy, in his late twenties, probably.

‘Morning,’ he said to me before turning to chat to the nurse. They had a quiet confab in the corner and then started preparing for the chipping procedure. I watched as they got the stuff together. The nurse got out some paperwork while the vet produced the syringe and needle to inject the chip. The size of it slightly took my breath away. It was a big old needle. But then I realised it had to be if it was going to insert the chip, which was the size of a large grain of rice. It had to be large enough to get into the animal’s skin.

Bob didn’t like the look of it at all, and I couldn’t really blame him. So the nurse and I got hold of him and tried to turn him away from the vet so that he couldn’t see what he was doing.

Bob wasn’t stupid, however, and knew something was up. He got quite agitated and tried to wriggle his way out of my grip. ‘You’ll be OK, mate,’ I said, stroking his tummy and hind legs, while the vet closed in.

When the needle penetrated, Bob let out a loud squeal. It cut through me like a knife and for a moment I thought I was going to start blubbing when he began shaking in pain.

But the shaking soon dissipated and he calmed down. I gave him a little treat from my rucksack then carefully scooped him up and headed back to the reception area.

‘Well done, mate,’ I said.

The nurse asked me to go through a couple of complicated-looking forms. Fortunately the information she wanted was pretty straightforward.

‘OK, we need to fill in your details so that they are on the database,’ she said. ‘We will need your name, address, age, phone number all that kind of stuff,’ she smiled.

It was only as I watched the nurse filling in the form that it struck me. Did this mean that I was officially Bob’s owner?

‘So, legally speaking, does that mean I am now registered as his owner?’ I asked the girl.

She just looked up from the paperwork and smiled. ‘Yes, is that OK?’ she said.

‘Yeah, that’s great,’ I said slightly taken aback. ‘Really great.’

By now Bob was settling down a little. I gave him a stroke on the front of the head. He was obviously still feeling the injection so I didn’t go near his neck, he’d have scratched my arm off.

‘Did you hear that, Bob?’ I said. ‘Looks like we’re officially a family.’

I’m sure I drew even more looks than usual as we walked through Islington afterwards. I must have been wearing a smile as wide as the Thames.

Having Bob with me had already made a difference to the way I was living my life. He’d made me clean up my act in more ways than one.

As well as giving me more routine and a sense of responsibility, he had also made me take a good look at myself. I didn’t like what I saw.

I wasn’t proud of the fact I was a recovering addict and I certainly wasn’t proud of the fact that I had to visit a clinic once a fortnight and collect medication from a pharmacy every day. So I made it a rule that, unless it was absolutely necessary, I wouldn’t take him with me on those trips. I know it may sound crazy, but I didn’t want him seeing that side of my past. That was something else he’d helped me with; I really did see it as my past. I saw my future as being clean, living a normal life. I just had to complete the long journey that led to that point.

There were still plenty of reminders of that past and of how far I had still to travel. A few days after I’d had him microchipped, I was rummaging around looking for the new Oyster card that had come through the post when I started emptying the contents of a cupboard in my bedroom.

There, at the back of the cupboard, under a pile of old newspapers and clothes, was a plastic Tupperware box. I recognised it immediately, although I hadn’t seen it for a while. It contained all the paraphernalia I had collected when I was doing heroin. There were syringes, needles, everything I had needed to feed my habit. It was like seeing a ghost. It brought back a lot of bad memories. I saw images of myself that I really had hoped to banish from my mind forever.

I decided immediately that I didn’t want that box in the house any more. I didn’t want it there to remind and maybe even tempt me. And I definitely didn’t want it around Bob, even though it was hidden away from view.

Bob was sitting next to the radiator as usual but got up when he saw me putting my coat on and getting ready to go downstairs. He followed me all the way down to the bin area and watched me as I threw the box into a recycling container for hazardous waste.

‘There,’ I said, turning to Bob who was now fixing me with one of his inquisitive stares. ‘Just doing something I should have done a long time ago.’

Life on the streets is never straightforward. You’ve always got to expect the unexpected. I learned that early on. Social workers always use the word ‘chaotic’ when they talk about people like me. They call our lives chaotic, because they don’t conform to their idea of normality, but it is normality to us. So I wasn’t surprised when, as that first summer with Bob drew to a close and autumn began, life around Covent Garden started to get more complicated. I knew it couldn’t stay the same. Nothing ever did in my life.

Bob was still proving a real crowd-pleaser, especially with tourists. Wherever they came from, they would stop and talk to him. By now I think I’d heard every language under the sun – from Afrikaans to Welsh – and learned the word for cat in all of them. I knew the Czech name, kocka and Russian, koshka ; I knew the Turkish, kedi and my favourite, the Chinese, mao . I was really surprised when I discovered their great leader had been a cat!