James Bowen - A Street Cat Named Bob

As the weeks passed and the nights turned even darker and colder, we spent more and more time curled up on the new sofa. I was already looking forward to a nice Christmas for me and Bob, although, as it turned out, that was a little premature.

It wasn’t often that I got post apart from bills, so when I saw a letter in my mailbox in the hallway of the flats one morning in early November 2008, I immediately noticed it. It was an airmail envelope and had a postmark – Tasmania, Australia.

It was from my mother.

We’d not been in proper contact for years. However, despite the distance that had formed between us, the letter was very chatty and warm. She explained that she had moved to a new house in Tasmania. She seemed to be very happy there.

The main point of her letter, however, was to offer me an invitation. ‘If I was to pay your air fares to Australia and back, would you come and see me?’ she asked. She explained that I could come over the Christmas holidays. She suggested I could also take in a trip to Melbourne to see my godparents, to whom I’d once been very close.

‘Let me know,’ she said, signing off. ‘Love, Mum.’

There would have been a time when I’d have thrown the letter straight into the dustbin. I’d have been defiant and stubborn and too proud to take a handout from my family.

But I’d changed, my head was in a different place now. I had started to see life a lot more clearly and I could almost feel some of the anger and paranoia that I’d felt in the past falling away. So I decided to give it some thought.

It wasn’t a straightforward decision, far from it. There were lots of pros and cons to take into consideration.

The biggest pro, obviously, was that I’d get to see my mother again. No matter what ups and downs we’d had over the years, she was my mother and I missed her.

We’d been in contact a couple of times since I’d fallen through the cracks and ended up on the streets but I’d never been honest with her about what had really happened. We’d met once in the past ten years, when she’d come to England briefly. I’d gone to meet her in a pub near Epping Forest. I’d taken the District Line up there and spent three or four hours with her. When I’d not returned as expected after six months, I’d spun her a story about having formed a band in London and said I wasn’t going to come back to Australia while we were ‘trying to make it big’.

I stuck to that story when I met her in the pub.

I hadn’t felt great about telling her a pack of lies, but I didn’t have the courage or the strength to tell her that I was sleeping rough, hooked on heroin and basically wasting my life away.

I had no idea whether she believed me or not. At that point in my life, I really didn’t care.

We’d talked occasionally after that, but frequently I would go for months on end without making contact, which had obviously caused her a lot of grief.

She’d gone to amazing lengths to get hold of me at times. I hadn’t thought to ring her when the 7/7 bombings happened in London in July 2005, I was – thankfully – nowhere near the blasts, but – stuck on the other side of the world – my mother had no idea that I was all right. Nick, whom she was still with, was serving in the police force in Tasmania at the time. Somehow he managed to persuade a member of the Met to do him and my mum a favour. They looked me up on their records and sent a couple of cops round to my B&B in Dalston one morning.

They scared the living daylights out of me when they arrived banging on the doors.

‘Don’t worry mate, you haven’t done anything wrong,’ one of them said when I opened the door, looking petrified probably. ‘There are just a couple of people on the other side of the world who want to know you are alive.’

I had been tempted to make a joke and say that they’d almost given me a heart attack but I decided against it. They didn’t look like they were that pleased to have been given the job of checking up on me.

I contacted Mum and reassured her that I was OK. Again, I hadn’t even considered that somebody else might have been concerned about me. I didn’t think that way at that time. I was on my own and concerned only with my own survival. But now I’d changed.

After all the years of neglect and deception, it would be a chance to make it up to her and to put the record straight. I felt like I needed to do that.

The other obvious positive was that I’d get to have a decent holiday in the sun, something that I had been deprived of for years living in London and working mostly in the evenings. I still felt drained by the experience of switching to my new medication and knew that a few weeks in a nice environment would do me the power of good. My mother told me she was living on a little farm way out in the middle of nowhere, near a river. It sounded idyllic. Australia, or more specifically, the Australian landscape, had always occupied a special place in my heart. Reconnecting with it would be good for my soul.

The list of pros were long. The list of cons, however, was even longer. And at the top of the list was my biggest concern of all: Bob. Who would look after him? How could I be sure he’d be there waiting for me when I got back? Did I actually want to be separated from my soulmate for weeks on end?

The answer to the first question presented itself almost immediately.

The moment I mentioned it Belle volunteered to look after him at her flat. I knew she was totally trustworthy and would take care of him. But I still wondered what the effect would be on him.

The other big concern was money. My mother might have been offering to pay for my fare, but I still wouldn’t be allowed into Australia without any money. I did some digging around and found that I’d need at least £500 in cash to gain admittance.

I spent a few days weighing up both sides of the argument but eventually decided I’d go. Why not? A change of scenery and some sunshine would do me good.

I had a lot to do. For a start I had to get a new passport, which wasn’t easy given the way my life had disintegrated in recent years. A social worker gave me a hand and helped me organise the necessary paperwork, including a birth certificate.

I then had to sort out the flights. The best deal by far was to fly with Air China to Beijing and then down to Melbourne. It was a much longer journey and involved a lengthy stop-off in Beijing. But it was way cheaper than anything else on the market. My mother had given me an email address by now. I sent her an email with all the details, including my new passport number. A few days later I got a confirmation email from the website through which my mother had booked the tickets. I was on my way.

All I had to do now was raise £500. Easy.

The flight I’d found was heading to Australia in the first week of December. So for the next few weeks, I worked every hour of the day in all weather. Bob came with me most days, although I left him at home when it was raining heavily. I knew he didn’t like it and I didn’t want to risk him catching a chill or getting ill before I went away. There was no way I’d be able to go to Australia knowing he was ill again.

I was soon saving up a bit of cash, which I kept in a little tea caddy I’d found. Slowly but surely it began to fill up. As my departure date loomed into view, I had enough to make the trip.

I headed to Heathrow with a heavy heart. I’d said goodbye to Bob at Belle’s flat. He’d not looked too concerned, but then he had no idea I was going to be away for the best part of six weeks. I knew he’d be safe with Belle but it still didn’t stop me fretting. I really had become a paranoid parent.

If I’d imagined the trip to Australia was going to be a nice, relaxing adventure I was sorely mistaken. The thirty-six hours or so it took me was an absolute nightmare.