James Bowen - A Street Cat Named Bob

I’d forgotten what a bad idea it is to search through medical websites. They always give you the worst possible scenario.

I punched in a few key words and came across a couple of informative-looking sites. When I entered the main symptoms – lethargic, vomiting, appetite loss and a few others – a whole swathe of possible illnesses popped up.

Some weren’t too bad, for instance, it could have been down to hairballs or maybe even a bad case of flatulence. But then I started looking at other possibilities. Just the As in the list were bad enough. They included Addison’s disease, acute kidney disease and arsenic poisoning. As if they weren’t scary enough, other options on the long list included feline leukaemia, colitis, diabetes, lead poisoning, salmonella and tonsillitis. Worst of all, as far as I was concerned, one of the sites said it could be an early sign of bowel cancer.

By the time I’d been reading for fifteen minutes or so I was a nervous wreck.

I decided to switch tack and look at the best treatments for vomiting. That was more positive. The sites I looked at suggested plenty of water, rest and supervision. So that was my plan for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. I’d basically keep an eye on him around the clock. If he started vomiting again, obviously, I’d head for the vets immediately. If not, I’d go to the Blue Cross on Thursday.

The next day I decided to stay at home until late in the afternoon to give Bob a good chance to rest. He slept like a log, curled up in his favourite spot. I wanted to keep an eye on him. He seemed OK, so I decided to leave him for three or four hours and try and squeeze in some selling. I didn’t have much option.

Trudging through the streets that led from Tottenham Court Road to Covent Garden I was aware of my invisibility again. When I got to Covent Garden all everyone could ask was ‘Where’s Bob?’ When I told people that he was ill they were all really concerned. ‘Is he going to be all right?’; ‘Is it serious?’; ‘Is he going to see a vet?’; ‘Is he OK on his own at home?’

It was then that an idea struck me. I had come across a vet nurse called Rosemary. Her boyfriend, Steve, worked at a comic-book shop near where we sometimes set up. Bob and I would pop in there every now and again and we had become friends. Rosemary had been in there with Steve one day and we’d struck up a conversation about Bob.

I decided to stick my head in there to see if either of them was around. Luckily Steve was there and gave me a phone number for Rosemary.

‘She won’t mind you ringing her,’ he said. ‘Especially as it’s about Bob. She loves Bob.’

When I spoke to Rosemary she asked me a load of questions.

‘What does he eat? Does he ever eat anything else when he’s out and about?’

‘Well, he rummages around in the bins,’ I said.

It was a habit he had never shaken off. He was an absolute terror. I’d seen him tear the garbage bags to pieces in the kitchen. I’d have to put them outside the front door. He was a street cat. You can take the cat off the street, but you can’t take the street out of the cat.

I could hear it in her voice, it was as if a light bulb had been switched on.

‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘That might explain it.’

She prescribed some probiotic medication, some antibiotics and some special liquid to settle the stomach.

‘What’s your address?’ she said. ‘I’ll get it biked over to you.’

I was taken aback.

‘Oh, I’m not sure that I can afford that, Rosemary,’ I said.

‘No, don’t worry, it won’t cost you anything. I’ll just add it to another delivery in the area,’ she said. ‘This evening OK?’

‘Yes, great,’ I said.

I was overwhelmed. Such spontaneous acts of generosity hadn’t exactly been a part of my life in the past few years. Random acts of violence, yes; kindness, no. It was one of the biggest changes that Bob had brought with him. Thanks to him I’d rediscovered the good side of human nature. I had begun to place my trust – and faith – in people again.

Rosemary was as good as her word. I had no doubt she would be. The bike arrived early that evening and I administered the first doses of the medicine straight away.

Bob didn’t like the taste of the probiotic. He screwed his face up and recoiled half a step when I gave him his first spoonful of it.

‘Tough luck, mate,’ I said. ‘If you didn’t stick your face in rubbish bins, you wouldn’t have to take this stuff.’

The medicine had an almost immediate impact. That night he slept soundly and was a lot friskier the following morning. I had to hold his head in my hand to make sure he swallowed the probiotic.

By the Thursday he was well on the road to recovery. But, just as a precaution, I decided to pop along to see the Blue Cross van on Islington Green.

The nurse on duty recognised him immediately and looked concerned when I told her Bob had been under the weather.

‘Let’s give him a quick check up, shall we?’ she said.

She checked his weight and inside his mouth and had a good feel around his body.

‘All seems well,’ she said. ‘I think he’s on the road to recovery.’

We chatted for a couple of minutes before I headed off.

‘Just don’t go rummaging in those bins any more, Bob,’ the nurse said as we left the makeshift surgery.

Seeing Bob sick had a profound effect on me. He had seemed to be such an indestructible cat. I’d never imagined him getting ill. Discovering that he was mortal really shook me.

It underlined the feeling that had been building inside me for a while now. It was time for me to get myself clean.

I was fed up with my lifestyle. I was tired of the mind-numbing routing of having to go to the DDU unit every fortnight and the chemist every day. I was tired of feeling like I could slip back into addiction at any time.

So the next time I went to see my counsellor I asked him about coming off methadone and taking the final step towards becoming completely clean. We’d talked about it before, but I don’t think he’d ever really taken me at my word. Today, he could tell I was serious.

‘Won’t be easy, James,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I know that.’

‘You’ll need to take a drug called Subutex. We can then slowly decrease the dosage of that so that you don’t need to take anything,’ he said.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘The transition can be hard, you can have quite severe withdrawal symptoms,’ he said, leaning forward.

‘That’s my problem,’ I said. ‘But I want to do it. I want to do it for myself and for Bob.’

‘OK, well, I will get things moving and we will look at beginning the process in a few weeks’ time.’

For the first time in years, I felt like I could see the tiniest light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

I could sense there was something wrong the moment I arrived at the Covent Garden coordinators’ stand one damp, cold Monday morning. A few other vendors were hanging around, stamping their feet to keep warm and sipping at Styrofoam cups of tea. When they noticed me and Bob, a couple of them muttered to each other and threw me dirty looks, as if I was an unwelcome guest.

When Sam, the coordinator appeared from the other side of the distribution trolley where she’d been collecting a new batch of papers, she immediately jabbed a finger at me.

‘James, I need to have a word with you,’ she said, looking stern.

‘Sure, what’s the problem?’ I said, approaching her with Bob on my shoulder.