Джеймс Боуэн - The World According to Bob

I was slightly dizzy afterwards. Starstruck I suppose would have been a more accurate description. I stayed in Neal Street for another hour or so but headed home on Cloud Nine.

There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of Sir Paul McCartney coming along to the signing. Why would he come? No one else was going to show up, I said to myself. All that really didn’t matter now. If it achieved nothing else and sold only five copies, the book had already allowed me to achieve the impossible. I’d chatted to a member of The Beatles.

Bob attracted so much attention these days that small crowds would often gather around us. Late on the afternoon of the Monday after I’d met the McCartneys, a dozen or so Spanish-speaking students were clustered on the pavement, each of them snapping away with their cameras and phones. It was always great to meet people, it was part of the attraction of what I did. But it could be distracting and, given the nature of street life, getting distracted was never a great idea.

As the crowd broke up and headed off in the direction of Covent Garden, I sat down on the pavement to give Bob a couple of treats. With the light already beginning to fade, the chill was really setting in again. Tomorrow was the day of the book signing in Islington. I wanted to get a reasonably early night, although I knew I wouldn’t sleep much. I also didn’t want to keep Bob out for much longer. As I stroked him, I noticed immediately that his body language was very defensive. His back was arched and his body was stiff. He wasn’t much interested in the food either which was always a sign something was wrong. Instead, his eyes were fixed on something in the near distance. Something — or someone — was clearly bothering him.

I looked across the street and saw a rough-looking character who was sitting, staring at us.

Living your life on the streets, you develop an instant radar when it comes to people. I could spot a bad apple instantly. This guy looked rotten to the core. He was a little bit older than me, in his late thirties probably. He was wearing battered jeans and had a denim jacket. He was sitting on the pavement, legs crossed, rolling up a cigarette and sipping on a can of cheap lager. It was obvious what he was looking at — and what his intentions were. He was working out how to relieve me of my money.

In the space of the last few minutes, most of the Spanish students and several others had dropped coins into my guitar case. One rather cool-looking black guy had given me £5. We’d probably collected £20 in the space of half an hour. I knew better than to leave too much money on display to the world and had scooped up most of it, slipping it in my rucksack. He’d obviously registered this.

I wasn’t going to confront him, however. As long as he kept his distance, there was no need. I’d been in his shoes myself. I knew how desperate people could get. I sensed he was trouble, but unless he proved that I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Let him cast the first stone and all that, I said to myself.

Just to make sure, however, I looked across at him and nodded, as if to say: ‘I’ve spotted you, and I know what you’re thinking. So just forget about it.’

Street people speak the same language. We can convey a hundred words with a simple look or expression, so he understood me immediately. He just growled, got himself up and slinked off. He knew he’d been rumbled and didn’t like it. He was soon heading off in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, probably to prey on someone else.

The instant the guy disappeared around the corner, Bob’s body language lightened and he had a renewed interest in the snacks.

‘Don’t worry, mate,’ I said, slipping a little biscuit into his mouth. ‘He’s gone on his way. We won’t see him again.’

The street was particularly busy that day and we’d soon collected more than enough to get Bob and me a few days’ worth of shopping in our local shop. When I started packing up, Bob didn’t need a second invitation to jump up on to my shoulders. It was getting colder by the minute.

I knew he’d need to do his business before we got the bus home, so we headed for his regular spot outside the posh office block on Endell Street.

To get to this spot we had to walk down one of the narrower and less well lit streets in the area. As we did so, the world suddenly turned quiet. London could be like that at times. One minute it was full to bursting, the next it was deserted. It was part of the city’s many contradictions.

I was halfway down the street when I felt Bob moving on my shoulder. At first I thought he was simply dying to go to the toilet.

‘Hold on for another second, mate,’ I said. ‘We’re almost there.’

But I soon realised he was repositioning himself and, unusually for him, had turned himself to look backwards rather than forwards.

‘What’s wrong, Bob?’ I said, turning around.

I looked down the street. There was a guy locking up his coffee shop for the evening and that was about it. I thought nothing more of it. The coast seemed clear enough to me.

Bob didn’t seem quite so convinced. Something was definitely bothering him.

I’d barely taken a dozen steps when all of a sudden he made the loudest noise I’d ever heard him make. It was like a primal scream, a piercing wheeeeeow followed by a really loud hissed hsssssssss . At the same time I felt a tug on my rucksack and then an almighty scream, this time from a human.

I swung round to see the bloke who had been staring at us earlier on Neal Street. He was bent over double and was holding his hand. I could see the back of it and saw that there were huge scratches. Blood was gushing from his wounds.

It was obvious what had happened. He had made a lunge for my rucksack. Bob must have dropped himself over my back and lashed out with his claws. He’d dug them deep into this guy’s hands, ripping into the skin. He was still in fighting mood too. Bob was standing on my shoulder, snarling and hissing.

But the guy wasn’t finished. He lunged at me with his fists but I managed to dodge him. It was hard to do much with Bob balanced on my shoulder, but I landed a well-directed kick to the guy’s leg. I was wearing my really heavy Dr. Martens boots so it had the desired effect and he dropped to his knees for a second.

He was soon back on his feet, though. For a moment we just stood there shouting at each other.

‘F***ing cat, look what it’s done to my f***ing hand,’ he said, waving his bleeding arm at me in the gloom.

‘Serves you right, you were going to mug me,’ I said.

‘I’ll f***ing kill it if I see it again,’ he said pointing at Bob. There was another brief standoff while the guy looked around the street. He found a small piece of wood which he waved at me a couple of times. Bob was screeching and hissing at him more animatedly than ever. The guy took one step towards us with the piece of wood then thought better of it and just tossed it to one side. After letting fly with another stream of expletives, he turned on his heels and stumbled off into the gloom, still holding his hand.

On the bus back home, Bob sat on my lap. He was purring steadily and had tucked his head under my arm, as he often did when he — or I — felt vulnerable. I guessed we were both feeling that way after our encounter, but I couldn’t be sure, of course.

That was the joy and frustration of having a cat. ‘Cats are mysterious kind of folk — there is more passing in their minds than we are aware of,’ Sir Walter Scott wrote. Bob was more mysterious than most. In many ways, that was part of his magic, what made him such an extraordinary companion. We had been through so much together, yet he still had the ability to startle and surprise me. He’d done it again this evening.