by James Bowen
One of the great blessings of a strong friendship is that it gives you the freedom to be yourselves together, to let your hair down and go a little bit crazy every now and again. You know each other well enough not to take it seriously. It doesn’t change anything long-term.
Share Your Good Fortune
To say that Bob transformed my fortunes is something of an understatement. In the ten years we’ve been together, my life has changed beyond all recognition. When we first teamed up, we had busked and sold The Big Issue together, living pretty much hand-to-mouth. In the past few years our job has been very different: appearing at public events and signings and on television to promote the books and the movie.
I’d like to think I haven’t changed too much in that time. It’s probably for others to judge that ultimately. But I can say with absolute certainty that Bob hasn’t altered one tiny bit. He has remained the same, Zen-like cat throughout. He has travelled the world, met thousands of people, appeared on countless TV shows. Yet he has remained chilled and content, from Berlin to Tokyo, Truro to Glasgow.
He has had his odd moment of grumpiness. Who doesn’t? But in the main, he has barely uttered a growl of complaint. He simply sits there swishing his tail rhythmically, sometimes purring quietly, putting a smile on people’s faces as he does so, including mine. The joy it gives me to see him bringing such happiness to others is beyond words. The knowledge that he is happy and content in doing so makes it even more precious.
They say that a problem shared is a problem halved. Well, I think the opposite is also true. Good fortune shared is good fortune doubled.
Faith in Friends Repays Itself
My stomach was churning as I led Bob in front of the lights and cameras that had been set up on an alleyway between Bow Street and Drury Lane.
It was a couple of weeks into the filming of A Street Cat Named Bob and the director Roger Spottiswoode was keen to experiment with Bob ‘acting’ in a scene. I had been unsure, but he and the producer Adam Rolston had persuaded me that this was a good opportunity.
The scene they had chosen involved Luke Treadaway, the actor playing me, sitting on the pavement, busking. It was a scene Bob knew inside out – he’d lived it for years.
But as I led him there I was racked with doubt. Would he be happy doing this? Even if he was, would he be able to do what was required of him? I didn’t want to let anyone down. And I certainly didn’t want to waste the very expensive film crew’s time.
The cameras had barely begun rolling when Bob did something amazing. As the stream of extras walked past, dropping and clinking coins into the guitar case, Bob began nodding at each of them, as if to say ‘thanks’.
The crew’s faces were a picture. You could see people asking themselves the same question: ‘Did I just see what I just saw?’ They had. And they saw it again on the next ‘take’, and the next one.
From then on, Bob appeared in as many scenes as was possible. He was working alongside a team of specialist ginger cats that had been brought over from Canada and trained to do the more difficult, action shots. Bob couldn’t do those. They were left to his ‘bobbelgangers’.
I learned a huge amount during those few, surreal weeks. But the lesson Bob taught me that night was perhaps one of the most important. Have faith. Believe in the friends who believe in you. If you do, they will repay that faith.
You Can’t Lose a Real Friend
During the course of our years together, Bob has run away from me twice. Both incidents happened early on during our time together when Bob got scared, first by a street entertainer and then by a very aggressive dog.
We were reunited on each occasion, but it didn’t mean the separations weren’t hard. During the – thankfully brief – periods that Bob and I were apart, I felt a nagging pain, as if there was something wrong with a part of me. It was only afterwards that I recognised what that meant.
The only friends you can lose are those who aren’t really friends at all.
You can never lose a true friend. Even if you are separated. That friendship lives on inside you. It is a part of each of you. It doesn’t go away.
PART TWO
It’s a Bob’s Life – What We Need to Be Happy
We are all in search of fulfilment. But how and where do we find it? What are the foundation stones, the must-have ingredients for a contented existence? In other words, what do we need to be happy?
It’s something I’ve often asked myself during my past decade with Bob. He has been instrumental in guiding me to some of the answers.
We All Need to Be Noticed
Once he and I had settled into our life together, Bob loved nothing more than being stroked or fussed over. I got the distinct impression that no one had spoiled him for a very long time, that he had been deprived of attention.
It pleased me that I was able to provide that attention, but it upset me, too. I kept imagining his previous life, kept seeing him sleeping in alleyways, being ignored by people. Getting no attention at all.
I didn’t need to imagine what that felt like. I knew all too well from my time living on the streets. Like him I’d been ignored, marginalised; I’d disappeared, become an invisible man. And so I also understood that his happiness with me was a reaction to being made to feel important. Special.
We all need to be noticed. We all need to feel we are important. That we are needed.
We All Need a Routine
The routine into which we eventually settled was key in making Bob a calmer, more contented cat. He was less animated and agitated if he ate at the same time: first thing in the morning and early in the evening, around six. If he was then free to have a nap, he became even less erratic. Less on edge.
Later on too, as our relationship settled into a regular working pattern, that routine became even more entrenched. By then it was summertime and I would head into Covent Garden to busk later in the day. The crowds were more numerous – and generous – in the late afternoon and evening.
It generally took us three quarters of an hour or so to get into the city, so in order to make the evening rush, we’d need to leave home before 5 p.m. Bob used to head to the door at 4.30 p.m. exactly. He’d finish off whatever food he had, then position himself there. It was as if he was saying: ‘Hurry up, mate, we’ve got a bus to catch.’
I could have set my watch to him. In fact, on more than one occasion he had acted as an alarm, hurrying me up when my mind was elsewhere.
I now see that need for certainty is something universal – something that each and every one of us feels. Routine gives us parameters, but more importantly, it makes us feel secure.
We All Need Our Space
The more I got to know Bob – and his feline ways – the more I got to see that he and I were not so different after all. And once I realised that, I also began to understand what would make him feel at home.
For example, I had heard that territory is hugely important to cats. It’s why they use the scent glands on their paws and in their claws to leave scent trails wherever they go. It is why they rub up and scratch furniture – and us, apparently. It provides them with assurance that their space is ‘safe’.
Early on I had dissuaded Bob from doing it, gently pushing him away when he started scratching at the legs of a battered old chair in the corner.
It was when a friend visited me with his dog, a black Labrador, that the penny dropped. On first seeing the dog, Bob arched his back, made hissing noises and retreated to a safe corner. The dog barked back a couple of times, but soon settled. Bob watched him like a hawk. The minute the dog was out of the door, he leapt into action, striding around the flat, rubbing and scratching at everything.
‘He’s reclaiming his territory,’ I said to myself.
We all like our space. We all prefer it to be a certain way and ‘mark’ it so that it is identifiably ours with our choice of furniture, colour schemes, paintings and photos on the wall. And we can get upset if other people invade that space and disrupt the ba
lance.
Ever since then, I have let Bob get on with it. He rubs up against me, the furniture, door frames, radiators. Anything that makes him feel like his territory is established – and safe.
We All Need to Be Independent
Bob has always been self-sufficient. I think it stems from his days on the streets, looking after himself.
He seems to have learned that, if you need something in life, it is usually best to rely on yourself to provide it. The chances are that no one else will.
Early on, for instance, he learned to open cupboard doors so that he could look for food. He also learned to go to the toilet on his own, and once – to my amazement – used the toilet in my flat.
In recent years, he has got even more resourceful. In my new house, Bob can turn the handles on doors, especially the one leading into the kitchen, where I keep his food and water bowl on the floor.
Even more impressively, he has learned how to turn the tap on one of the sinks upstairs. He loves watching the running water and, when he’s feeling a bit over-heated, will dip his paw in and lick it to quench his thirst.
It always makes me smile. But it also reinforces something important. We all need to be independent. We all need to feel like we can control our lives.
We All Want to Feel Protected
We were out in central London one day, early on in our time together, when there was a loud explosion nearby. At first there was panic. We live in dangerous times. People didn’t know what had happened, whether to hide or run for safety. After a while, however, it calmed down.
Bob had been walking alongside me. He had reacted to the bang instantly and had jumped up on to my shoulders. I’d been too wrapped up in the drama to really notice. But as things calmed down, I realised that he was still there – wrapped tightly around my neck.
He’d taken to riding on my shoulders when we were walking around central London, but this was the first time I’d seen him jump there as a reflex, as if seeking out a safe haven. I was touched. It underlined the feeling I had that he felt safe, protected in my company. And that safety was one of the reasons why he had decided to live with me.
We all need to feel that safety. That we are protected by someone or something.
We All Need to Be Ourselves
I had taken Bob into the park off the Embankment, near where we had been busking around Charing Cross station. I decided to sit down and take a break, while he did his business in the bushes.
He was attached to a long, string lead, which I could lengthen. After a while I felt a tugging on the line, as if I was a fisherman who had landed a fish. He was trying to get deeper into the bush. I stood up and fed him some more string. I assumed he wanted to find the right spot.
It was a couple of minutes later when he emerged. He did so with a small mouse in his teeth. It was alive and wriggling, desperately trying to escape. I was about to intervene, when the mouse managed to escape. Bob had placed it on the ground for a second and it had made a run for it. It scampered off at lightning speed.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Cats are predatory creatures. If we were going to be out in the world together, incidents like this were going to happen. It brought something home to me.
None of us are angels. We are all imperfect creatures. But we are who we are. It is in our nature. So many people try to change others – to mould them into something they are not. I wasn’t going to do that.
Bob is a strong personality and I wanted him to be himself. Looking back on it, I think it was another of the reasons he stayed with me. None of us want to be prisoners of other people’s ideas about who we should be. We all need to be free to be ourselves.
We All Need Something to Believe In
We were sitting on the pavement in the West End one evening, when a well-dressed guy emerged from the tube station concourse, walked to a spot a dozen or so metres from us and erected a placard.
It read: ‘Believe in the Lord’.
I left him to it. My salvation depended on selling another dozen copies of The Big Issue before the evening rush hour ended.
The guy soon started preaching, reading from the Bible, but few people paid him any attention. Some were openly abusive to him. I admired his resilience. He believed in something, I thought to myself.
For a moment I watched him, fascinated, a question forming in my mind.
Hmm, I thought. What do I believe in?
Just then Bob perked up and let out a meow. It was his ‘I’m hungry’ meow.
I reached into my rucksack and dug out a treat, then bent down to feed him. He leaned into my hand and rubbed his head against it, purring quietly.
I smiled to myself. I had my answer.
‘You are what I believe in, Bob,’ I said.
It was true. He had given me a new approach to life. A different perspective. He’d also given me purpose. Something to focus on, a shape to my day-to-day life. A structure that hadn’t been there before.
In some sense, Bob must have felt the same way, too. He needed something to believe in as well, I guess. I think we all do.
We All Need Our Own Patch
It was a sunny weekend afternoon, a short time after Bob and I had moved into our new house, in the Surrey suburbs. I’d come downstairs to find Bob wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
Instinctively I went out into the small garden where, in the past few days, he had begun to explore his new surroundings, sniffing the grass and the plants and watching the birds in the trees overhead. Sure enough, I glimpsed his distinctive ginger coat disappearing over the garden fence, backing on to some open ground beyond.
I was surprised. Bob wasn’t a cat that wandered particularly. He liked to stay close to home. So whilst I was concerned, I didn’t panic immediately.
After a couple of hours, however, I began to grow more nervous. Evening was closing in and I didn’t want him to be out overnight. So I returned to the garden and started shouting for him. There was no sign of him.
I was just about to head back into the house when I heard noises. I recognised the sound instantly: it was two cats confronting each other.
I found Bob and a large, black cat a few feet apart on the fence alongside the house. The instant he saw me, Bob leapt off and literally jumped into my arms. It was as if we’d been separated for years – not a few hours.
It was obvious what had been going on. He had been doing what everyone needs to do to a greater or lesser extent when they move home, getting to know the lie of the land, marking out his own patch. Satisfied that he’d done that, he had run for home. He hasn’t strayed from the garden since.
We All Need Things to Treasure
The sound of me doing the weekly hoovering in the living room had sent Bob scuttling off upstairs. He didn’t much like it.
I’d not cleaned under the sofa for a while, so decided to slide it across the carpet to get the hoover underneath. I had been amazed at what I found.
It was like an Aladdin’s cave of Bob’s stuff.
He is regularly given and sent toys by fans from all over the world and plays with lots of them. Somehow, he had dragged a collection of toy animals, balls and assorted toys here. But this wasn’t all. Bob had developed a habit of playing with plastic bottle lids that he found in the kitchen.
He had somehow hoarded about a dozen of them as well.
I threw the lids in the bin, but put the toys back into the large box in the hall.
I was intrigued. Why had he hoarded like this?
It wasn’t too long after we had moved house. Had he been concerned that this new environment may contain other cats or animals who might steal his toys? Or was it his way of making sure his toys were safe from me? He had seen me bring in new furniture – and get rid of some other things. Was he concerned about me throwing his toys away?
Whatever the explanation, one thing was clear. These things were important to him. Knowing they were there made him feel safe and secure. Thinking about it, again, I realised that I was no different
.
I was protective of certain things – photos, gifts from fans, books, mementoes from my travels – and had made sure I had safe places to keep them, in my living room and office. It was less to do with the fact they were worth anything, but more because they were of immense value to me.
It’s all part of that need to feel that our home – and the precious things that make it feel like a home – are safe and secure.
We All Need Insecurity, Too
I had just moved into my new home and taken delivery of some flatpack furniture, which I’d slowly begun assembling. The hallway was filled with empty cardboard boxes, plastic bubble wrap and bits of polystyrene.
Bob, naturally, was fascinated by this. To him the chaotic pile of rubbish was an adventure playground, which he had to explore at every possible opportunity.
I had just finished putting together a coffee table in the living room when I noticed him playing there.
He was fixated by the bubble wrap and polystyrene. He was fascinated by the squeaking noises they made. He was also drawn to the boxes. One at a time, he climbed into the smaller ones, as if testing them to see which would make the best bed later. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was all going into a recycling bin when I finished assembling everything.
The taller cardboard boxes that had contained the cabinets, were leaning up against each other, supporting each other like some sort of abstract art sculpture. Bob decided to climb it. The construction was very flimsy and I had a feeling he would be too heavy, but left him to it.
Sure enough, he’d just scaled the peak of the little cardboard mountain when whoomph , the whole edifice collapsed. Nimble and agile creature that he was, he jumped off, looking slightly miffed that his fun had been cut short.