A Street Cat Named Bob

by James Bowen

  I was checking that I had enough papers left to cope with the surge of activity I knew was about to arrive when I saw out of the corner of my eye that a group of kids had gathered around us. They were teenagers I guessed, three boys and a couple of girls. They looked South American or maybe Spanish or Portuguese.

  There was nothing unusual about this. It wasn’t quite Covent Garden, Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus, but Islington had its fair share of tourists and Bob was a magnet for them. Barely a day went by without him being surrounded by an excitable group of youths like this.

  What was different this evening, however, was the way they were animatedly pointing and talking about him.

  ‘Ah, si Bob,’ said one teenage girl, talking what I guessed was Spanish.

  ‘Si, si. Bob the Beeg Issew Cat,’ said another.

  Weird, I thought to myself when I realised what she’d said. How do they know his name is Bob? He doesn’t wear a name tag. And what do they mean by the Big Issue Cat?

  My curiosity soon got the better of me.

  ‘Sorry, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how do you know Bob?’ I said, in the hope that one of them spoke decent English. My Spanish was almost non-existent.

  Fortunately one of them, a young boy, replied. ‘Oh, we see him on YouTube,’ he smiled. ‘Bob is very popular, yes?’

  ‘Is he?’ I said. ‘Someone told me he was on YouTube, but I’ve got no idea how many people watch it.’

  ‘Many people, I think,’ he smiled.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘España, Spain.’

  ‘So Bob’s popular in Spain?’

  ‘Si, si,’ another one of the boys said when the boy translated back our conversation. ‘Bob es una estrella en España.’

  ‘Sorry, what did he say?’ I asked the boy.

  ‘He says that Bob is a star in Spain.’

  I was shocked.

  I knew that lots of people had taken photographs of Bob over the years, both while I was busking and now that I was selling the Big Issue. I’d jokingly wondered once whether he should be put forward for the Guinness Book of Records: the world’s most photographed cat.

  A couple of people had filmed him too, some with their phones, others with proper video cameras. I started casting my mind back over those that had shot footage of him in recent months. Who could have shot a film that was now on YouTube? There were a couple of obvious candidates, but I made a note to check it out at the first opportunity.

  The following morning I headed down to the local library with Bob and booked myself online.

  I punched in the search terms: Bob Big Issue Cat. Sure enough, there was a link to YouTube, which I clicked on. To my surprise there was not one, but two films there.

  ‘Hey Bob, look, he was right. You are a star on YouTube.’

  He hadn’t been terribly interested until that point. It wasn’t Channel Four racing, after all. But when I clicked on the first video and saw and heard myself talking he jumped on to the keyboard and popped his face right up against the screen.

  As I watched the first film, which was called ‘Bobcat and I’, the memory came back to me. I’d been approached by a film student. He’d followed me around for a while back during the days when we were selling the Big Issue around Neal Street. There was nice footage of us there and of us getting on the bus and walking the streets. Watching the film it gave a pretty good summary of the day-to-day life of a Big Issue seller. There were clips of people fussing over Bob, but also a sequence where I was confronted by some guys who didn’t believe he was a ‘tame’ cat. They belonged to the same group of people who thought I was drugging him.

  The other video had been filmed more recently around the Angel by a Russian guy. I clicked on the link for that and saw that he’d called his film ‘Bob The Big Issue Cat’. This must have been the one that the Spanish students had seen. I could see that it had had tens of thousands of hits. I was gobsmacked.

  The feeling that Bob was becoming some kind of celebrity had been building for a while. Every now and again someone would say: ‘Ah, is that Bob? I’ve heard about him.’ Or ‘Is this the famous Bobcat?’ I’d always assumed it was through word of mouth. Then, a few weeks before meeting the Spanish teenagers, we had featured in a local newspaper, the Islington Tribune. I’d even been approached by an American lady, an agent, who asked me whether I’d thought about writing a book about me and Bob. As if!

  The Spanish teenagers made me realise that it had begun to morph into something much more than local celebrity. Bob was becoming a feline star.

  As I headed towards the bus stop and absorbed what I had just discovered, I couldn’t help smiling. On one of the films I had said that Bob had saved my life. When I first heard it I thought it sounded a bit crass, a bit of an exaggeration too. But as I walked along the road and put it all into perspective it began to sink in: it was true, he really had.

  In the two years since I’d found him sitting in that half-lit hallway, he had transformed my world. Back then I’d been a recovering heroin addict living a hand-to-mouth existence. I was in my late twenties and yet I had no real direction or purpose in life beyond survival. I’d lost contact with my family and barely had a friend in the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, my life was a total mess. All that had changed.

  My trip to Australia hadn’t made up for the difficulties of the past, but it had brought me and my mother back together again. The wounds were being healed. I had the feeling we were going to become close again. My battle with drugs was finally drawing to a close, or at least, I hoped it was. The amount of Subutex I had to take was diminishing steadily. The day when I wouldn’t have to take it all was looming into view on the horizon. I could finally see an end to my addiction. There had been times when I’d never imagined that was possible.

  Most of all, I’d finally laid down some roots. It might not have seemed much to most people, but my little flat in Tottenham had given me the kind of security and stability that I’d always secretly craved. I’d never lived for so long in the same place: I’d been there more than four years and would remain there even longer. There was no doubt in my mind that would not have happened if it hadn’t been for Bob.

  I was raised as a churchgoer but I wasn’t a practising Christian. I wasn’t an agnostic or atheist either. My view is that we should all take a bit from every religion and philosophy. I’m not a Buddhist but I like Buddhist philosophies, in particular. They give you a very good structure that you can build your life around. For instance, I definitely believe in karma, the idea that what goes around, comes around. I wondered whether Bob was my reward for having done something good, somewhere in my troubled life.

  I also wondered sometimes whether Bob and I had known each other in a previous life. The way we bonded together, the instant connection that we made, that was very unusual. Someone said to me once that we were the reincarnation of Dick Whittington and his cat. Except the roles had been reversed this time around, Dick Whittington had come back as Bob - and I was his companion. I didn’t have a problem with that. I was happy to think of him in that way. Bob is my best mate and the one who has guided me towards a different - and a better - way of life. He doesn’t demand anything complicated or unrealistic in return. He just needs me to take care of him. And that’s what I do.

  I knew the road ahead wouldn’t be smooth. We were sure to face our problems here and there – I was still working on the streets of London, after all. It was never going to be easy. But as long as we were together, I had a feeling it was going to be fine.

  Everybody needs a break, everybody deserves that second chance. Bob and I had taken ours . . .

  Acknowledgements

  Writing this book has been an amazing collaborative experience, one in which so many people have played their part.

  First and foremost I’d like to thank my family, and my mum and dad in particular, for giving me the sheer bloody-minded determination that has kept me going through some dark times in my life
. I’d also like to thank my godparents, Terry and Merilyn Winters, for being such great friends to me.

  On the streets of London, so many people have shown kindness to me over the years, but I’d like to single out Sam, Tom, Lee and Rita, the Big Issue co-ordinators who have been so generous to me. I’d also like to thank outreach workers Kevin and Chris for their compassion and understanding. Thanks also the Blue Cross and RSPCA for their valuable advice and Davika, Leanne and the rest of the staff at Angel tube station who have been so supportive of me and Bob.

  I’d also like to thank Food For Thought and Pix in Neal Street who have always offered me and Bob a warm cup of tea and a saucer of milk, as well as Daryl at Diamond Jacks in Soho and Paul and Den the cobblers who have always been my good friends. I’d like also to mention Pete Watkins at Corrupt Drive Records, DJ Cavey Nik at Mosaic Homes and Ron Richardson.

  This book would never have happened if it hadn’t been for my agent Mary Pachnos. It was she who first approached me with the idea. It sounded pretty crazy at the time, and I’d never have been able to get it all down and turned into a coherent story without the help of her and the writer Garry Jenkins. So a heart-felt thanks to both Mary and Garry. At my publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, I’d like to thank Rowena Webb, Ciara Foley, Emma Knight and the rest of the brilliant team there. Thanks also to Alan and the staff at Waterstone’s in Islington who even let me and Garry work on the book in the quiet upstairs. And a big thank you to Kitty, who without her constant support we’d both be lost.

  Finally I’d like to thank Scott Hartford-Davis and the Dalai Lama who have, in recent years, given me a great philosophy by which to live my life, and Leigh Ann, who is in my thoughts.

  Last, and most definitely not least, of course, I have to thank the little fellow who came into my life in 2007 and who – from the moment I befriended him – has proven to be such a positive, life-changing force in my life. Everyone deserves a friend like Bob. I have been very fortunate indeed to have found one . . .

  James Bowen

  London, January 2012

  Bob Information Page

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  James and Bob at www.hodder.co.uk

  and at Bob’s very own Twitter site:

  @streetcatbob