by James Bowen
A few days after he’d got his head caught in the tin can, however, I noticed that he was wolfing down all his breakfast in double-quick time. He was even licking the bowl clean.
He was also more demanding. I had always decided when to give him a reward for his tricks. But now he began to ask for snacks himself. There was something different about the way he pleaded for these snacks as well. It wasn’t the usual plaintive, ’Puss in Boots’ look. It was as if he was really desperate for food. And it was the same when we got home. Ordinarily, he was pretty laid back about getting his dinner, but he began to hassle me as soon as we were in the door. He would be quite agitated until I filled his bowl up. Again, he’d shovel everything down him as fast as possible and give me a look straight out of Oliver Twist. ‘Please, dad, can I have some more?’
The alarming thing, however, was that after a week or so of this behaviour he wasn’t gaining any weight.
That’s odd, I said to myself one evening when he’d finished his dinner and still looked like he could have eaten more.
Adding to my suspicions that something was wrong was the fact that he was going to the toilet more often. Bob was, like most cats, a creature of habit when it came to toilet time. Over the years he’d overcome his dislike of going in the litter tray at home and did his business there in the mornings. He’d then go again when we were out in London. Suddenly, however, this habit had changed and he had started going three times or more each day. He might have been going more than that, as far as I knew. I’d caught him using the toilet in the flat once. I hadn’t seen him use it again since then, for some reason. Maybe he didn’t like me watching him? But as I began to worry more and more about this change in his habits I noticed the water in the toilet bowl was a little off colour sometimes.
He had also started demanding to be taken to the toilet more often at Angel. It was always a real palaver, packing up and heading over to the Green so that he could get on with things, but it had to be done.
‘What is wrong with you, Bob?’ I said, losing patience with him after a few days of this. He just gave me an aloof look, as if to tell me to mind my own business.
The moment I knew I had a real problem, however, was when I found him dragging his bottom along the floor. The first time I noticed it was one morning soon after I’d woken up. I saw him deep in concentration, scooting his undercarriage on the carpet in the living room.
I wasn’t best pleased.
‘Bob, that’s disgusting, what do you think you’re doing?’ I scalded him.
But I soon realised that it must mean that he had a problem. As usual, I was short of money and didn’t want to splash out on a visit to the vet and the inevitable medicine expenses that would follow. So the next morning on the way into work I decided to drop into the local library and have a little root around on the internet. I had my suspicions but had to be sure. My hunch was that he had some kind of stomach infection involving a parasite. It didn’t necessarily explain the eating, but it was consistent with going to the toilet more often and scooting his bottom on the floor.
My greatest fear was that it was a parasite infection. I cast my mind back to my childhood in Australia when I’d seen a couple of cats develop worms. It wasn’t pleasant, and was also contagious. A lot of children in Australia used to contract worms from their cats. It was quite gross actually.
Of course, researching illness on the internet is always the biggest mistake you can make. I’d done it before, but hadn’t heeded the lesson. Sure enough, within about half an hour I’d convinced myself that Bob’s symptoms were consistent with a really serious kind of worm, a hookworm or a tapeworm. Neither is usually a fatal illness, but they can be really nasty, causing severe loss of weight and a deterioration in the coat if untreated.
I knew I had no option but to check his poo the next time he went to the toilet. I didn’t have to wait long. Within about an hour of us settling down at Angel, he started making his tell-tale noises and gestures and I had to take him off to the Green. I braced myself to sneak a quick look before he covered up his business in the soft earth. He didn’t take kindly to my intrusion.
‘Sorry, Bob, but I’ve got to take a peek,’ I said, inspecting his droppings with a twig.
It may sound bizarre, but I was delighted when I saw some tiny, white wiggly creatures in there. It was worms, but only tiny little ones.
‘At least it’s not tapeworm or hookworm,’ I consoled myself for the rest of that day.
Heading home that night I felt a strange, slightly confusing mix of emotions. The responsible cat owner in me was really miffed. I was so careful about his diet, avoiding raw meats and other things that are known to be risky when it comes to worms. I had also been diligent in making sure he was regularly checked for fleas, which can act as hosts for worms. He was also a really clean and healthy cat, and I made sure the flat was in a decent condition for him to live. I felt like it reflected badly on me. I felt like I’d let him down a little bit. On the other hand, however, I was relieved that I now knew what I needed to do.
As luck would have it, I knew the Blue Cross drop-in van was going to be at Islington Green the following day. So I made sure that we headed off early to beat the lengthy queues that always built up before the clinic began.
The staff there knew Bob and I well; we’d been regular visitors over the years. Bob had been micro-chipped there and I’d spent the best part of a year dropping in to slowly pay off the fees I’d incurred for that and other treatments. I’d also had him checked out frequently, including for fleas, ironically.
The vet who was on duty that morning asked me to describe the problem, then took a quick look at Bob and a sample of poo that I’d put in a plastic, pill container I had lying around the house before coming to a predictable conclusion.
‘Yes, he’s got worms I’m afraid, James,’ he said. ‘What’s he been eating lately? Anything out of the ordinary? Been rummaging in the bins or anything like that?’
It was as if a light had gone on in my head. I felt so stupid.
‘Oh, God, yes.’
I’d completely forgotten about the tin can incident. He must have found a piece of old chicken or other meat in there. How could I have failed to see that?
The vet gave me a course of medication and a syringe with which to apply it.
‘How long will it take to clear things up?’ I asked.
‘Should be on the mend within a few days, James,’ he said. ‘Let me know if the symptoms persist.’
Years earlier, when I’d first taken Bob in and had to administer antibiotics to him I’d had to do it by hand, inserting tablets in his mouth and then rubbing his throat to help them on their way down into his stomach. The syringe would, in theory, make that process simpler. But he still had to trust me to insert the contraption down his throat.
Back at the flat that evening, I could tell that he didn’t like the look of it. But it was a measure of how much he trusted me that he immediately let me place the plastic inside his mouth and release the tablet before rubbing his throat. I figured that he must know I wouldn’t do anything to him that wasn’t absolutely necessary.
As the vet had predicted, Bob was back to his normal self within a couple of days. His appetite waned and he was soon eating and going to the toilet normally again.
As I thought about what had happened, I gave myself a ticking off. The responsibility of looking after Bob had been such a positive force in my life. But I needed to live up to that responsibility a little better. He wasn’t a part time job that I could clock into whenever the mood took me.
I felt particularly negligent because it wasn’t the first time Bob had suffered because of his habit of rummaging in bins. A year or so earlier, he’d got quite sick after investigating the inside of the wheelie bins outside the block of flats.
I told myself that I could never let a bin bag lie around like that again. It was stupid of me to have done so in the first place. Even if everything was sealed, Bob was such a resourceful
and inquisitive character, he’d find a way in.
Most of all though, I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t often that he was off colour or ill, but whenever he was, the pessimist in me always jumped to the worst possible conclusions. As daft and over-dramatic as it was, over the past days I’d found myself imagining him dying and me having to carry on life without him. It was a prospect that was too scary to contemplate.
I always said that we were partners, that we needed each other equally. Deep down I believed that wasn’t really true. I felt like I needed him more.
Chapter 7
Cat on a Hoxton Roof
Bob and I have always been a fairly distinctive pair. There aren’t many six foot tall blokes walking around the streets of London with a ginger cat sitting on his shoulders, after all. We certainly turn heads.
For a few months during the summer and autumn of 2009 we made an even more eye-catching sight. Unfortunately, I was in too much pain to enjoy the attention.
The problems had begun the previous year when I’d travelled to Australia to see my mother. My mum and I had always had a difficult relationship and we’d become estranged for the best part of a decade. Apart from a brief visit to London, the last time I’d seen her was when she’d seen me off at the airport as an 18-year-old heading from Australia to ‘make it’ as a musician in London. In the lost decade that followed, we’d barely talked. Time had healed the wounds a little, so, when she offered to pay for me to visit her in Tasmania, it seemed right that I should go.
With Bob’s help I’d just managed to make a massive breakthrough and wean myself off methadone. It had left me feeling weak so I needed the break. Bob had stayed with my friend Belle, at her flat near Hoxton in north London, not too far from Angel.
The long flights to and from Australia had taken their toll on me physically, however. I had known about the risks of spending hours immobile on long haul flights, especially when you are tall, like me, and had done my best to avoid sitting for too long in a cramped seating position. But despite doing my best to walk around the plane as often as possible, I’d come home with a nagging pain in my upper thigh.
At first it had been manageable and I’d dealt with it by taking ordinary, over-the-counter pain killers. Slowly but surely, however, it had grown worse. I had begun experiencing an incredible cramping feeling, as if my blood had stopped flowing and my muscles were seizing up. I know no human feels rigor mortis, but I had a suspicion if we did, this was the sensation. It was as if I had the leg of a zombie.
The pain had soon become so bad that I couldn’t sit or lie down with my leg in anything resembling a normal position. If I did I would be in constant muscular pain. So whenever I was watching television or eating a meal at home in the flat I had to sit with my leg on a cushion or another chair. When it came to bedtime I had to sleep with my foot elevated over the end of the bed head.
I’d been to see the doctor a couple of times, but they had only prescribed stronger pain killers. During the dark days of my heroin addiction, I had injected myself everywhere in my body, including in my groin. I’m sure they felt that my condition, whatever it was, was just some kind of hangover from my abusive past. I hadn’t pushed it, part of me was used to being fobbed off still. It reinforced that old feeling I’d had as a homeless person that I was somehow invisible, that society didn’t regard me as its concern.
The real problem for me was that I still needed to earn a crust. So that meant that, regardless of how much discomfort I was in, I still had to haul myself out of bed and head to Angel on a daily basis.
It wasn’t easy. The moment I put my foot on the floor, the pain shot up through my leg like an electric shock. I could only walk three or four steps at a time. So the walk to the bus stop became a marathon, often taking me twice or three times as long as it would normally.
Bob didn’t know what to make of this at first. He kept giving me quizzical looks, as if to say: ‘what are you doing, mate?’ But he was a smart boy and had soon worked out there was something wrong and started changing his behaviour accordingly. In the morning, for instance, rather than greeting me with his usual repertoire of sounds, nudges and pleading looks, he had started looking at me with an inquisitive and slightly pitying expression. It was as if he was saying ‘feeling any better today?’
It was the same story as we headed to work. Often Bob would walk alongside me rather than taking up his usual position on my shoulders. He obviously preferred travelling on the upper deck, as I put it, but he would trot along beside me as much as he possibly could. I think he could see I was in pain.
When he felt that I had been soldiering on for too long he would actually try to make me stop and sit down. He would cut across my path, trying to steer me in the direction of a bench or wall where I could take a break. I took the view that it was better to finish my journey rather than stopping every few steps so, for a while, it developed into a bit of a battle of wills.
It must have been quite entertaining when locals in Tottenham saw us picking our way down the road near my flats. Whenever he heard me complain about the pain Bob would stop and give me a look that suggested I should take a breather or sit down. I’d look back at him and say, ‘No, Bob, I need to keep moving.’ If I hadn’t been in so much agony, I’d probably have found it quite amusing myself. We probably resembled a bickering old married couple.
After a while, however, it became pretty clear that I couldn’t carry on like this. Often I’d arrive home from work exhausted, only to discover that the lift was out of order again. The walk to the fifth floor was absolutely excruciating and could take an eternity. So I had begun staying with Belle.
There were all sorts of advantages to this. To begin with her flat was on the first floor rather than the fifth floor which saved me a lot of aggravation. Getting to work from there was also a less painful process with a bus stop only yards away.
It helped a little, but the pain continued to grow gradually worse. My dread of putting my foot on the floor had now become so great that one morning I decided to make myself a crutch. With Bob in tow, I’d headed into the pretty little park near Belle’s flat and found a branch from a fallen tree that fitted perfectly under my arm, allowing me to keep the weight off my painful leg when I walked. It only took me a day or so to get the hang of it.
I got a lot of very strange looks, understandably. With my long hair and shaggy beard, I must have looked like some kind of modern-day Merlin or Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings. As if that wasn’t odd enough, the sight of a ginger cat sitting on my shoulder must have conjured up images of wizards walking around with their ‘familiars’. The truth was that I didn’t really care what it looked like at that point. Anything that eased the pain was a Godsend.
Getting anywhere on foot had become a real ordeal. I was taking a few steps and then keeling over and sitting on the nearest brick wall. I’d tried using the bike to get around but that was an utter impossibility. The moment I applied any pressure to the pedal with my right leg I was in agony. The Bobmobile was in the hallway back in Tottenham, gathering dust.
There was no question that Bob understood that there was something seriously wrong with me and at times I felt like he was losing patience. Some mornings, as he watched me struggling to get my trousers on ready to go to work, he would give me a withering look as if to say: ‘why are you doing this to yourself? Why don’t you stay in bed?’ The answer to that, of course, was that I had no option. We were skint, as usual.
My daily routine became a real chore. We’d get off the bus at Islington Green and head to the little park there so that Bob could do his business. From there, I’d hobble over to the The Big Issue co-ordinator’s spot, which was just outside Starbucks coffee shop. I’d then cross the main road and head to the tube station, and our pitch.
Having to stand there for five or six hours a day wasn’t feasible. I would have passed out. Fortunately, one of the florists outside the tube station saw the state I was in one day and came over to me holding
a couple of buckets that he used to hold flowers.
‘There you go, sit on that. And get Bob to sit on the other one,’ he had said, giving me an encouraging pat on the back.
I really appreciated it. There was no way I was going to be able to stand for more than a few minutes at a time.
At first, I’d been worried that sitting on the bucket would be a disaster for my business. (People always laughed when I called selling The Big Issue a business, but that’s actually what it was. You had to buy magazines in order to sell them so, as a vendor, you had to make fine judgements about stock and budgeting week in, week out. The principle was actually no different from running a giant corporation and the stakes were just as high, if not higher. Succeed and you survived, fail and you could starve to death.) Ordinarily, I paced around the area outside the station coaxing and cajoling people into parting with their hard-earned cash. When I started sitting on the bucket, I was terrified that people simply wouldn’t see me sitting there. I should have known better. Bob took care of it.
Maybe it was because I was sitting down with him more of the time, but during this period he became a real little showman. In the past, it had usually been me who had instigated the playful routines. But now he began taking the initiative himself. He would rub up against me and give me a look as if to say, ‘come on mate, get the snacks out, let’s do a few tricks and earn ourselves a few quid’. There were times when I was convinced he knew precisely what was happening. I was certain he’d worked out that the sooner we earned a decent amount of money, the sooner we could get home and rest my leg. It was eerie how he understood so much.
I wished I could see life so clearly sometimes.
Living at Belle’s with Bob had its pros and cons. I was still desperately trying to work out what was wrong with my leg, but just hoped that by resting it the problem would somehow go away. While I spent as much time as I could off my feet, Belle looked after me, cooking me nice meals and doing my laundry, and Bob got on well with her. During the time he’d spent with her while I was in Australia, they had clearly formed a strong bond. She was the only other person whom he would ever consider allowing to pick him up, for instance.