James Bowen: The World According to Bob

There are subtler messages too. If, for instance, he is worried about me, he comes up really close as if to examine me. If I am feeling under the weather, he often sidles up and listens to my chest. He does a lot of loving things like that. He has this habit of coming up and rubbing against me, purring. He also rubs his face on my hand tilting his head so that I can scratch behind his ear. Animal behaviourists and zoologists are entitled to their opinions, but to me this is Bob’s way of telling me that he loves me.

Of course, the most frequent message he wants to get across relates to food. If he wants me to come to the kitchen to feed him, for instance, he goes around banging on the doors. He is so clever, he could easily unpick one of the child locks I’ve had to fit specifically to keep him out, so I always have to go and check. By the time I get there, he has always removed himself to a spot by the radiator in the corner where he’ll be wearing his most innocent look. But that doesn’t last for long and he’ll soon be pleading for a snack.

Bob is nothing if not persistent and won’t leave me alone until he gets what he wants. He can get quite frustrated if I choose to ignore him and tries all sorts of tricks from tapping me on the knee to giving me the ‘Puss in Boots’ look. There is no end to his creativity when it comes to filling a gap in his tummy.

For a while, his biggest challenge was distracting me while I played computer games on the second-hand Xbox I’d picked up in a charity shop. Most of the time Bob was quite happy to watch me playing. He was fascinated by certain games, especially motor racing ones. He would stand beside me experiencing each bend and manoeuvre. On one occasion, I could have sworn I saw his body swaying as we took a particularly sharp hairpin bend together. He drew the line at action games with a lot of shooting, however. If I was playing one of these he would carry himself off to another corner of the room. If the game – or I – ever got too loud he’d lift up his head and look across. The message was simple: ‘turn it down please, can’t you see I’m trying to snooze’.

I could get really wrapped up in a game. It wasn’t unheard of for me to start a game at 9pm and not finish until the wee small hours. But Bob didn’t appreciate this and would do his damnedest to get my attention, especially when he was hungry.

There were times, however, when I was immune to his charms so he took more drastic measures.

I was playing a game with Belle one night when Bob appeared. He’d had dinner a couple of hours earlier and had decided that he needed a snack. He went through his usual attention-seeking routine, making a selection of noises, draping himself across my feet and rubbing himself against my legs. But we were both so heavily involved in reaching the next level of this game that we didn’t respond at all.

He sloped off for a moment, circling the area where the TV and Xbox were plugged in. After a moment, he moved in towards the control console and pressed his head against the big, touch sensitive button in the middle.

‘Bob, what are you up to?’ I asked innocently, still too engrossed in the game to twig what he was doing.

A moment later, the screen went black and the Xbox started powering down. He had applied enough pressure to the button that he’d switched it off. We had been halfway through a really tricky level of the game, so should have been furious with him. But we both sat there with the same expression of disbelief on our faces.

‘Did he just do what I think he did?’ Belle asked me.

‘Well, I saw it too, so he must have. But I don’t believe it.’

Bob stood there looking triumphant. His expression said it all: ‘So how are you going to ignore me now?’

We don’t always rely on signals and body language. There are times when we have a strange kind of telepathy, as if we both know what the other one is thinking, or doing. We’ve also learned to alert each other to danger.

A few days after I’d acquired the bike, I decided to take Bob to a local park that had just been given a bit of a makeover. By now he was completely comfortable riding around on my shoulders and had become more and more confident, leaning in and out of the corners like a motorbike pillion rider.

The park turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Apart from a few new benches and shrubs and a decent playground for young children, it seemed nothing much had changed. Bob was keen to explore, nevertheless. If I felt it was safe, I occasionally let him off his lead so that he could enjoy himself scrabbling around in the overgrowth while he did his business. I had just done so today and was sitting, reading a comic and soaking up a few rays of sunshine, when, in the distance, I heard the barking of a dog.

Uh oh , I thought.

At first, I guessed it was a couple of streets away. But as the barking grew louder I realised it was a lot closer than that. In the distance I saw a very large, and very menacing looking, German Shepherd running towards the entrance to the park. The dog was no more than 150 yards away and was off its leash. I could tell it was looking for trouble.

‘Bob,’ I shouted at the overgrowth where, I knew, he was busy conducting his call of nature. ‘Bob, come here.’

For a moment, I was panic stricken. But, as so often in the past, we were on the same wavelength and his head soon popped up in the bushes. I was waving my arms at him, encouraging him to join me without making too much fuss. I didn’t want the dog to spot me. Bob understood what was happening immediately and bolted out of the bushes. He wasn’t afraid of dogs, but he picked his battles wisely. Judging by the noise the German Shepherd was making, this wasn’t a dog with which we wanted to pick a fight.

Bob’s bright ginger coat wasn’t exactly hard to spot amidst the greenery, though, and the dog soon began accelerating towards us, barking even more fiercely. For a moment I had a terrible feeling that Bob had left it too late so I grabbed the bike and got ready to ride it into the firing line if necessary. I knew if the German Shepherd intercepted him, Bob could be in serious trouble.

As so often in the past, however, I’d underestimated him.

He sprinted across the grass and arrived as I crouched down on one knee. In one seamless move, I flipped him on to my shoulder, jumped straight on to the bike, and – with Bob standing on my shoulders – hit the pedals and began cycling out of the park.

The frustrated German Shepherd pursued us for a short time, at one point running alongside as we sped down the street. I could hear Bob hissing at him. I couldn’t see his face, but it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if he was taunting him.

‘What are you going to do about it now, tough guy?’ he was probably saying.

As I hit the main road back towards our block of flats, I looked round to see our nemesis receding into the distance where he had been joined by his owner, a big, burly guy in a black jacket and jeans. He was struggling to get the dog back on its lead, but that was his problem, not mine.

‘That was a close one, Bob,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness for the Bobmobile.’

It was rare I got visitors at the flat. I didn’t have many friends locally and kept to myself within the building. I would pass the time of day with neighbours but I could count the number of times any of them had popped round for a chat on the fingers of one hand. So I was always wary whenever someone knocked on the door or pressed the building’s intercom at the entrance downstairs. I automatically assumed the worst, expecting to find myself confronted by a bailiff or a debt collector chasing me for money that I didn’t have.