James Bowen: The World According to Bob

It was only then, as I mentally mapped out the journeys that I’d be able to cycle from now on, that it suddenly struck me.

‘Ah, how am I going to get this home?’

Bus drivers don’t let bikes on board and there was no prospect of getting it on a tube. I’d be stopped at the barriers immediately. I might get away with taking it on an overground train, but there were no lines that went anywhere near my flats.

There’s only thing for it , I told myself.

‘OK, Bob, looks like you and I are riding this home,’ I said.

Bob had been soaking up the sunshine on the pavement near Rita but had been keeping half an eye on me throughout. When I’d climbed on the bike, he tilted his head to one side slightly, as if to say: ‘what’s that contraption and why are you sitting on top of it?’

He looked suspiciously at me again as I strapped on the cycle helmet, slung my rucksack on my shoulders and started wheeling the bike towards him.

‘Come on, mate, climb on board,’ I said, reaching down to him and letting him climb on my shoulders.

‘Good luck,’ Rita said.

‘Thanks. I think we’ll need it!’ I said.

The traffic on Islington High Street was heavy and, as usual, at a virtual standstill. So I walked the bike along the pavement for a while, towards Islington Memorial Green. We passed a couple of police officers who gave me a curious look, but said nothing. There was no law against riding a bike with a cat on your shoulders. Well, as far as I was aware there wasn’t. I guess if they’d wanted to pull me over they could have done. They obviously had better things to do with their afternoon, thank God.

I didn’t want to cycle along the High Street so I wheeled the bike across a pedestrian crossing. We drew more than our fair share of glances; the looks on people’s faces ranged from astonishment to hilarity. More than one person stopped in their tracks, pointing at us as if we were visitors from another planet.

We didn’t linger and cut across the corner of the Green, past the Waterstones bookshop, and turned into the main road to north London, Essex Road.

‘OK, here we go, Bob,’ I said, bracing myself to enter the heavy traffic. We were soon weaving our way through the buses, vans, cars and lorries.

Bob and I soon got the hang of it. As I focussed on staying upright, I could feel him re-adjusting himself. Rather than standing he decided, sensibly, to drape himself across my neck, with his head down low and pointing forward. He clearly wanted to settle down and enjoy the ride.

It was mid-afternoon and a lot of children were heading home from school. All along Essex Road groups of kids in uniforms would stop and wave at us. I tried waving back at one point but lost my balance a little bit, sending Bob sliding down my shoulder.

‘Oops, sorry, mate. Won’t do that again,’ I said, as we both regained our equilibrium.

Progress was steady but a little slow at times. If we had to stop because of traffic we were instantly shouted at by someone asking for a photo. At one point, two teenage schoolgirls jumped out into the road to snap themselves with us.

‘Oh my God, this is so cute,’ one of them said, leaning into us so heavily as she posed for her photo that she almost knocked us over.

I hadn’t ridden a bicycle for a few years and I wasn’t exactly in prime physical condition. So I took a little breather every now and again, attracting a posse of onlookers each time I did so. Most smiled their approval but a couple shook their heads disapprovingly.

‘Stupid idiot,’ I heard one middle-aged guy in a suit say as he strode past us.

It didn’t feel stupid at all. In fact, it felt rather fun. And I could tell Bob was having a good time too. His head was right next to mine and I could feel him purring contentedly in my ear.

We travelled all the way down to Newington Green and from there towards Kingsland Road where the road headed down towards Seven Sisters. I had been looking forward to this section. For most of the journey, apart from a couple of little inclines here and there, the road had been fairly flat. At that point, however, I knew that it dropped downhill for a mile or so. I’d be able to freewheel down it quite easily.

To my delight, I saw there was a dedicated bike lane, which was completely empty. Bob and I were soon flying down the hill, the warm summer air blowing through our hair. ‘Woohoo. Isn’t this great Bob?,’ I said at one point. I felt a bit like Elliott in E.T. – not that I expected us to take off and fly our way back across the north London rooftops at any point, obviously, but we must have been clocking close to 20 miles per hour at one point.

The traffic in the main lane to our right was gridlocked, and people were winding down their windows to let in some air. Some of the expressions on their faces as we whizzed past them were priceless.

A couple of children stuck their heads out of the sun roofs of their cars and shouted at us. A few people just looked on in utter disbelief. It was understandable, I supposed. You don’t see a ginger cat whizzing down a hill on a bike very often.

It only took me about half an hour to get home, which was pretty impressive considering we’d had so many unplanned stops.

As we pulled up in the communal area outside the flats, Bob just hopped off my shoulders as if he was disembarking the bus. This was typical of his laid-back attitude to life. He had taken it all in his stride; just another routine day in London.

Back in the flat, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening tinkering with the bike. I’d soon fixed the front brakes and given it a general tuning up.

‘There you go,’ I said to Bob, as I stood back to admire my handiwork. ‘I think we’ve got ourselves a Bobmobile.’

I couldn’t be sure, but I was pretty sure that the look he gave me signalled his approval.

People often ask me how Bob and I communicate with each other so well.

‘It’s simple,’ I usually answer. ‘He has his own language, and I’ve learned to understand it.’

It might sound far-fetched, but it’s true.

His main means of communication is body language. He has a range of signals that tell me exactly what he is feeling, and more to the point, what he wants at any particular moment. For instance, if he wants to go to the toilet, when we are walking around the streets, he starts grumbling and growling a little bit. He then starts fidgeting on my shoulder. I don’t need to look at him to know what he is up to; he’s scouting around for a spot with some soft dirt where he can do his business.

If, on the other hand, he is walking on his lead and gets tired he lets out a light, low-pitched grumble or moan-cum-growl. He also refuses to walk an inch. He just looks at me as if to say ‘come on mate, pick me up I’m worn out’.

If he ever gets scared he backs up on my shoulder, or if he is standing on the floor, he performs a reverse manoeuvre so that he is standing between my legs in position in case I need to pick him up. To his credit, it is rare that anything frightens him. The sound of an ambulance or a police car going by with their sirens blaring barely bothers him at all. He is very used to it, living and working in central London. The only thing that freaks him a little is the pressurised air brakes on big lorries and buses. Whenever he hears that loud, hissing sound he recoils and looks scared. On bonfire nights, he also gets a little nervous about the loud bangs and explosions, but he generally enjoys watching the bright, sparkling lights in the sky from the window of my flat.

There are other signals too. For instance, I can tell a lot about his mood from the way he moves his tail. If he is snoozing or asleep his tail is still and quiet, of course. But at other times he wags it around, using different movements. The most common wag is a gentle side-to-side movement, rather like a windscreen wiper on its slowest setting. This is his contentment wag. I’ve spent endless hours sitting around London with him and have seen him doing it when he is being entertained or intrigued by something. The lady who’d tried to steal him at Angel hadn’t been the first to misread this movement. Others had made the same mistake and misconstrued it as a sign of anger. Bob does get angry, but he signals that with a very different tail movement in which he flicks it around, a bit like a fly swatter.