Джеймс Боуэн - The World According to Bob

We’d had our fair share of confrontations over the years, but we’d never been attacked like this. And I’d never seen him react and defend me in that way either. I’d not been switched on to the threat this guy posed at all, but Bob had.

How had he sensed the guy was not to be trusted from the minute he set eyes on him? I could read the signs from a human perspective, but how did he know that? And how had he detected his presence when we were walking away from Neal Street? I’d seen no sign of him anywhere. Had Bob caught a glimpse of him hiding in an alleyway? Had he smelled him?

I didn’t know. I just had to accept that Bob possessed abilities and instincts that were beyond my understanding — and would probably always remain that way.

That was the frustrating part. He was exhilarating company at times, but he was also an enigma. I would never truly know what went on in his feline brain. Yes, we were best friends. We had an almost telepathic bond. Instinctively, we knew what each other were thinking at times. But that understanding didn’t extend to being able to share our deepest thoughts. We couldn’t really tell each other what we felt. As silly as it sounded, I often felt sad about that. And I did so now.

Holding him close to me as the bus lurched its way through the London traffic, I had an almost overwhelming urge to know what emotions he’d gone through back there in the side street. Had he been scared? Or had he just fallen back on his basic instincts? Had he just sensed the need to defend himself — and me — and acted? Had he just dealt with it in the moment? And did that mean that he’d already forgotten about it? Or was he thinking the same kind of thoughts as me? I am fed up with this life. I am sick of having to look over my shoulder all the time. I want to live in a safer, gentler, happier world .

I suspected I knew the answer. Of course he’d rather not be fighting off scumbags on the streets. Of course, he’d rather be sitting somewhere warm rather than freezing on a pavement. What creature wouldn’t?

As my mind ticked over, I dipped into my pocket and pulled out a scrunched up flyer. It was one of the last that I had. I’d given the rest away. It had a photo of me with Bob on my shoulders and read:

Come and meet

James Bowen and Bob the cat

James and Bob will be signing copies of their new book

A STREET CAT NAMED BOB

at Waterstones, Islington Green, London

on Tuesday 13th March 2012 at 6pm

Bob looked at it and tilted his head ever-so-slightly. It was, again, as if he recognised the image of the pair of us.

I stared at the scrap of paper for what must have been a couple of minutes, lost in my thoughts.

I’d been wrestling with the same old questions for so long now. Truth be told, I was thoroughly sick of them. But tonight had brought them to the fore again. How many more times would I have to put myself and Bob in the firing line? Would I ever break this cycle and get us off the streets?

I flattened the flyer out neatly and folded it away in my pocket.

‘I hope this is the answer, Bob,’ I said. ‘I really do.’

It was barely 9am but my stomach was already churning away like a cement mixer.

I’d made some toast but couldn’t touch it for fear of being physically sick. If I felt like this now, I asked myself, how on earth was I going to feel in nine hours’ time?

The publishers had organised the signing, thinking it would be a good opportunity to generate some London publicity, and maybe attract a few people to buy a copy or two at the same time. As well as handing out flyers down in Covent Garden I had even detoured via Angel a couple of times. We still had a few friends there, thankfully.

Waterstones in Islington had been the obvious venue. The store was part of my story in more ways than one. Not only had the staff there helped us when we’d had nowhere to go a year or so earlier, they even featured in one of the more dramatic scenes in the book. One weekday evening, I’d run in the front door, desperate and panic-stricken, when Bob had run off after being scared by an aggressive dog at Angel tube station.

In the days running up to the event I’d started giving interviews to more newspapers but also to radio and television. To help me get used to this, I’d been sent to a specialist media trainer in central London. It was a bit intimidating. I had to sit in a sound-proofed room having myself recorded and then analysed by an expert. But he had been gentle with me and had taught me a few tricks of the trade. During one of the first recordings, for instance, I’d made the classic mistake of fiddling with a pen while talking. When it was played back to me all I could hear was the sound of me tapping the pen against the desk like some manic rock drummer. It was incredibly distracting and annoying.

The trainer prepared me for the sort of questions I could expect. He predicted, quite rightly, that most people would want to know how I’d ended up on the streets, how Bob had helped changed my life and what the future held for us both. He also prepared me to answer questions about whether I was clean of drugs, which I was happy to do. I felt I had nothing to hide.

The pieces the newspapers and bloggers had been writing were almost universally nice. A writer from the London Evening Standard had said some lovely things about Bob, writing that he ‘has entranced London like no feline since the days of Dick Whittington’. But he also upset me a little by writing about the holes in my jeans and my ‘blackened teeth and nails’. He also described me as having the ‘pleading manner of someone who is used to being ignored’. I’d been warned to expect that kind of thing; it went with the territory and the bottom line was that I knew I was ‘damaged goods’ as that same writer called me. It wasn’t pleasant though.

The signing had been scheduled two days ahead of the official publication date, March 15th, which also happened to be my 33rd birthday.

I hoped that wasn’t going to put a hex on everything. Birthdays hadn’t exactly been a cause for celebration in my life, certainly not since my teens.

I had spent my 13th birthday in a children’s ward at the Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital in Western Australia. It had been a miserable time in my young life and had only accelerated my downward spiral. Not long afterwards I’d started sniffing glue and experimenting with marijuana. It was the start of my long descent into drug addiction.

Fast forward ten years, to my 23rd birthday, and I’d been on the streets of London. I might have spent it in a hostel, but I could just as easily have been sleeping rough in an alleyway around Charing Cross. At that point my life was at rock bottom and I had absolutely no recollection of it. The days, weeks, months and years had all blended into each other. The chances are that, if I had been aware it was my birthday, I’d have spent the day trying to beg, borrow or — most likely — steal the money I needed to treat myself to an extra wrap of heroin. I’d probably taken the same reckless gamble I’d taken a hundred times before and risked overdosing by taking an ‘extra hit’. I could easily have ended up like that guy I’d seen on the landing of my flats.

Ten years further down the road, my life had finally taken a positive turn. That period now seemed like another life and another world. When I looked back I found it hard to believe that I’d lived through that period. But, for good or bad, it would always be a part of me. It was certainly a part of the book. I’d decided not to sugar-coat my story. It was virtually all there, warts and all, which was another one of the reasons I felt so racked with nerves.