James Bowen - A Street Cat Named Bob

But no matter what weird or wonderful tongue was being spoken, the message was almost always the same. Everyone loved Bob.

We also had a group of ‘regulars’, people who worked in the area and passed by on their way home in the evening. A few of them would always stop to say hello. One or two had even started giving Bob little presents.

It was the other ‘locals’ who were causing the problems.

To begin with I’d been getting a bit of hassle over at James Street from the Covent Guardians. I’d been continuing to play next to the tube station. On a couple of occasions a Guardian had come over and spoken to me. He’d laid down the law, explaining that the area was for painted statues. The fact that there didn’t seem to be any around at that moment didn’t bother him. ‘You know the rules,’ he kept telling me. I did. But I also knew rules were there to be bent a little when they could be. Again, that was life on the streets. If we were the kind of people who stuck to the rules, we wouldn’t have been there.

So each time the Guardian moved me on, I’d head off elsewhere for a few hours then quietly slip back into James Street. It was a risk worth taking as far as I was concerned. I’d never heard of them calling in the police to deal with someone performing in the wrong place.

The people who were bothering me much more were the staff at the tube station who also now seemed to object to me busking outside their workplace. There were a couple of ticket inspectors in particular who had begun giving me a hard time. It had begun as dirty looks and the odd casual comment when I set myself up against the wall of the tube station. But then one really unpleasant inspector, a big, sweaty guy in a blue uniform, had come over to me one day and been quite threatening.

By now I had come to realise that Bob was a great reader of people. He could spot someone who wasn’t quite right from a distance. He had spotted this guy the minute he started walking in our direction and had started squeezing himself closer to me as he approached.

‘All right, mate?’ I said.

‘Not really. No. You had better piss off – or else,’ he said.

‘Or else what?’ I said, standing my ground.

‘You’ll see,’ he said obviously trying to intimidate me. ‘I’m warning you.’

I knew he had no power outside the tube station and was just trying to spook me. But afterwards I’d made the decision that it might be smart to stay away for a while.

So at first I’d moved to the top of Neal Street, near the junction with Long Acre, still no more than a healthy stone’s throw from the tube station but far enough to be out of sight of the staff. The volume of people passing there wasn’t as great – or always as well-meaning – as the people around Covent Garden. Most times I worked there I’d get some idiot kicking my bag or trying to scare Bob. I could tell he wasn’t comfortable there: he’d curl up in a defensive ball and narrow his eyes to a thin slit whenever I set up there. It was his way of saying: ‘I don’t like it here.’

So after a few days, rather than heading towards Covent Garden as usual, Bob and I climbed off the bus and walked through Soho in the direction of Piccadilly Circus instead.

Of course, we hadn’t left central London – and the borough of Westminster – so there were still rules and regulations. Piccadilly worked in a similar way to Covent Garden; there were certain areas that were designated for buskers. This time I decided to stick to the rules. I knew that the area to the east of Piccadilly Circus on the road leading to Leicester Square was a good spot, specifically for buskers. So I headed there.

Arriving there with Bob, I picked a spot only a few yards away from one of the main entrances to the Piccadilly Circus tube station, outside the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not exhibition.

It was a really busy late afternoon and evening with hundreds of tourists on the street, heading to the West End’s cinemas and theatres. We were soon doing all right, despite the fact that people move so fast around that area, running down the tube entrance. As usual, they slowed down and sometimes stopped when they saw Bob.

I could tell Bob was a little nervous because he curled himself up even tighter than usual around the bridge of my guitar. It was probably the number of people and the fact that he was in unfamiliar surroundings. He was definitely more comfortable when he was in a place that he recognised.

As usual, people from all over the world were milling around, taking in the sights of central London. There were a lot of Japanese tourists in particular, a lot of whom were fascinated by Bob. I’d soon learned another new word for cat: neko. Everything was fine until around six in the evening, when the crowds really thickened with the beginning of the rush hour. It was at that point that a promotions guy from Ripley’s came out on to the street. He was wearing a big, inflatable outfit that made him look three times his normal size and was making big arm gestures encouraging people to visit Ripley’s. I had no idea how it related to the exhibits inside the building. Maybe they had something on the world’s fattest man? Or the world’s most ridiculous job?

But I could tell immediately that Bob didn’t like the look of him. I sensed him drawing in even closer to me when he first appeared. He was really unsure of the bloke and was staring at him with a look of slight trepidation. I knew exactly where he was coming from; he did look a bit freaky.

To my relief, after a while Bob settled down and seemed to forget about the man. For a while we just ignored him as he carried on trying to persuade people to step into Ripley’s. He was having some success, so he stayed away from us. I was singing a Johnny Cash song, ‘Ring of Fire’, when, for no particular reason, the promotions guy suddenly approached us, pointing at Bob as if he wanted to come and stroke him. I didn’t spot him until he was almost upon us, leaning down in his weird inflatable suit. And by then it was too late.

Bob’s reaction was instantaneous. He just sprung up and bolted, running into the crowds with his new lead trailing behind him. Before I could even react, he’d disappeared, heading towards the entrance to the tube station.

Oh shit , I said to myself, my heart pumping. He’s gone. I’ve lost him .

My instincts took over at once. I jumped up straight away and ran after him. I just left the guitar. I was much more worried about Bob than an instrument. I could find one of those anywhere.

I immediately found myself in a sea of people. There were weary-looking office workers heading down the tube at the end of a day’s work, early evening revellers arriving for a night ‘up West’ and, as always, loads and loads of tourists, some with rucksacks, others clutching streetmaps, all looking a little overwhelmed at finding themselves at the beating heart of London. I had to bob and weave my way through them to even get to the entrance to the tube station. Inevitably, I bumped into a couple of people, almost knocking over one lady.

It was impossible to see anything through the constant wall of people that was moving towards me, but as I finally got to the bottom of the steps inside the concourse, things began to thin out a little bit. It was still heaving with people, but at least I could now stop and take a look around. I got down on my haunches and looked around at floor level. One or two people gave me strange looks but that didn’t concern me.

‘Bob, Bob, where are you, mate?’ I shouted at one point, immediately realising how futile that was with all the noise in there.

I had to make a guess and head in one direction. Should I go towards the barriers that led to the escalators and down to the trains or move towards the various other exits? Which way would Bob go? My hunch was that he wouldn’t go down the tube. We’d never been down there together and I had a feeling the moving escalators would frighten him.