The World According to Bob

by James Bowen

  What I did know, however, was that I couldn’t blame the doctors, my mother or anyone else for the way my life had gone since then. Yes, they had played a role, but the buck stopped with me. No one told me to develop a drug problem. No one forced me to drift on to the streets of London. No one made me take up heroin. They were mistakes that I made of my own free will. I hadn’t needed anyone’s help to screw up my life. I’d done a perfectly good job of that on my own.

  If nothing else, the book was an opportunity for me to make that crystal clear.

  For a moment my dad was lost for words. The expression on his face was a mixture of disbelief, happiness, pride – and mild apprehension.

  ‘That’s a lot of money, Jamie,’ he said after a couple of moments, putting to one side the manila coloured cheque I’d just handed him.

  ‘You’d better be careful with that.’

  The reality of what had happened hadn’t really sunk in until now. Not just for my dad, but for me either. There had been meetings with publishers, contracts signed, even articles in the newspapers. But it hadn’t been until I received this cheque for the advance that it finally struck home.

  When it had first flopped through the letter box a couple of days earlier, I had opened the envelope and then simply sat there looking at it. The only cheques I’d seen in the past decade had been from the DHSS. They were for small amounts, £50 here and £100 there, never anything with more than a couple of noughts on it.

  Compared to some people, especially in London, it wasn’t actually that large a sum of money. For a lot of the commuters walking past me each day on their way to the City of London, I guess it wasn’t even a month’s salary. But for someone for whom £60 was a very good day’s wage, it was an eye-watering amount of cash.

  The arrival of the cheque, though, had brought two immediate problems. I was terrified of frittering it away but, even more of a worry, I didn’t have a bank account into which I could pay it. I’d had an account years ago but hadn’t managed it very well. I’d got used to living on cash and for the last few years had taken all my cheques to a ‘cash converters’. Which was why I’d travelled to my father’s house in south London.

  ‘I was hoping you could look after it for me,’ I’d asked him over the phone. ‘I can then ask you for money as and when I need it.’

  He’d agreed and I’d now had the cheque endorsed over to his name. (Not a huge change because we shared the exact same initials and surname.)

  Rather than meeting as usual at Victoria, he’d invited me over to his neck of the woods. We went for a couple of drinks in his local and chatted for a couple of hours.

  ‘So is this going to be a proper book?’ he asked me, the scepticism he’d displayed ever since I’d told him about it resurfacing once more.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, is it a picture book or a children’s book? What is it going to be about exactly?’ he said.

  It was a fair question, I suppose.

  I explained that it was the story of how I met Bob, and how we’d helped each other. He looked a little nonplussed.

  ‘So will me and your mother be in it?’ he asked.

  ‘You might get a mention,’ I said.

  ‘I’d better get on to my lawyers then,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘No, don’t worry. The only person that comes out badly in all this is me.’

  That made him change tack a little.

  ‘And is this going to be a long-term thing?’ he continued. ‘You writing books.’

  ‘No,’ I said, honestly. ‘I’m not going to become the next J.K. Rowling dad. There are thousands of books published every year. Only a tiny minority of them become bestsellers. I really don’t think a tale about a busker and recovering drug addict and his stray ginger cat is going to be one of them. So, yes this is going to be a short-term thing. It’s a nice windfall, and no more.’

  ‘All the more reason to be careful with the money then,’ he said, seizing the opportunity to give me some sensible fatherly advice.

  He was right, of course. This money would ease the stress on me for a few months, but not much longer. I had debts to clear and my flat was badly in need of some refurbishing. I knew I had to be realistic which meant that I had to keep my job with The Big Issue going. We talked about this for a little while, but he then went off into a lecture on the relative merits of various investments and savings schemes. At that point, I did what I had so often done when my parents spoke to me. I tuned out completely.

  Chapter 12

  The Joy of Bob

  Being with Bob has been such an education. I’d not had many mentors in my life and had spurned the few well-meaning people who had tried to guide and advise me. I always knew better than them, or so I imagined.

  It is a bizarre thing to admit, but with Bob it has been different. He has taught me as much, if not more, than any human I’ve come across. Since being in his company I’ve learned important lessons about everything from responsibility and friendship to selflessness. He has even given me an insight into a subject I thought I’d never really understand – parenthood.

  I doubted whether I would ever have children. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be up to the job and, truth be told, the opportunity hadn’t really presented itself. I’d had a couple of girlfriends over the years, including Belle, to whom I was still really close and thought the world of. But starting a family hadn’t ever been on the horizon. As Belle once succinctly put it, I was too busy behaving like a child myself most of the time.

  Caring for Bob has, however, given me a glimpse into what it must be like to be a father. In particular, it has made me realise that parenthood is all about anxiety. Whether it is fretting over his health, watching out for him when we are out on the streets, or simply making sure he is warm and well fed, life with Bob often feels like one worry after another.

  It actually chimes with something that my father had said to me after I’d been missing in London for a year or so. It had been at the height of my addiction and both he and my mother had been beside themselves with concern about me.

  ‘You have no idea how much a parent worries about his or her child,’ he had shouted at me, furious at what he called my selfishness in not being in touch with them.

  It hadn’t meant much at all to me then. Since being with Bob I have begun to appreciate what hell I must have put my parents through. I wish I could turn back the clock and save them all that grief.

  That is the bad news. The good news is that, in amongst the anxiety and worry, ‘parenthood’ brings with it a lot of laughter too. That is another thing Bob has taught me. For far too long I’d found it hard to find much joy in life. He has taught me how to be happy again. Even the slightest, silliest moments we share together can bring an instant smile to my face.

  One Saturday lunchtime, for instance, I answered a knock on the door and found the guy from the flat across the hallway standing there.

  ‘Hi, just thought I’d let you know that your cat is out here.’

  ‘Sorry, erm, no. Must be someone else’s. Mine’s in here,’ I said, turning around to scout around the living room.

  ‘Bob. Where are you?’

  There was no sign of him.

  ‘No, I’m pretty sure this is him out here. Ginger isn’t he?’ the guy said.

  I stepped out into the hallway to discover Bob sitting around the corner, perfectly still on top of a cupboard on the landing with his head pressed against the window, looking down on the street below.

  ‘He’s been there a while. I noticed him earlier,’ the guy said, heading for the lift.

  ‘Oh. Thanks,’ I said.

  Bob just looked at me as if I was the world’s biggest party pooper. The expression on his face seemed to say: ‘Come on up here and take a look at this view with me, it’s really interesting.’

  ‘Bob, how the heck have you got there?’ I said, reaching up to collect him.

  Belle was visiting and was in the kitchen rustling up a sandwich.
>
  ‘Did you let Bob out?’ I asked her back inside the flat.

  ‘No,’ she said, looking up from the worktop.

  ‘I can’t work out how he got out into the hallway and hid himself up on top of the cupboard.’

  ‘Ah, hold on,’ Belle said, a light coming on somewhere inside her head. ‘I popped downstairs about an hour ago to put some rubbish out. You were in the bathroom. I shut the door behind me but he must have slid out without me noticing and then hidden away somewhere when I came back up. He’s so damned clever. I’d love to know what’s going on in his mind sometimes.’

  I couldn’t help laughing out loud. It was a subject I’d speculated on quite a lot over the years. I’d often found myself imagining the thought processes Bob went through. I knew it was a pointless exercise and I was only projecting human behaviour onto an animal. Anthropomorphising I think they call it. But I couldn’t resist it.

  It wasn’t hard, for instance, to work out why he’d been so happy finding his new vantage point out in the hallway today.

  There was nothing Bob loved more than watching the world go by. Inside the flat, he would regularly position himself on the kitchen window sill. He could sit there happily all day, monitoring the goings on below, like some kind of security guard.

  His head would follow people as they walked towards and then past our flats. If someone turned into the entrance to the building, he’d stretch himself until he had lost sight of them. It might sound crazy, but I found it incredibly entertaining. He took it so seriously that it was almost as if he had a list of people who were allowed to travel this way at certain times and in certain directions. He’d see someone passing and look as if to say ‘yes, OK, I know who you are’ or ‘come on you’re running late for the bus to work’. At other times he’d get quite agitated, as if he was thinking: ‘Oi, hang on! I don’t recognise you’ or: ‘Hey. You don’t have clearance, where do you think you’re going. Get back here.’

  I could easily while away half an hour just watching Bob watching others. Belle and I used to joke that he was on patrol.

  Bob’s escape into the hallway today was typical of something else he seemed to love doing as well, playing hide and seek. I’d found him hiding in all sorts of surprising nooks and crannies. He particularly loved anywhere warm.

  One evening, I went to have a bath before I went to bed. As I nudged the bathroom door open, I couldn’t help thinking it felt a little odd. Rather than swinging open easily it needed an extra nudge. It felt heavy somehow.

  I didn’t think much more of it and started running a bath. I was looking in the mirror by the sink when I noticed something moving on the back of the door amongst the towels I kept in a rack. It was Bob.

  ‘How on earth have you got up there?’ I said, howling with laughter.

  I worked out that he must have climbed on to a shelving unit near the door and then, somehow, jumped from there on to the towels, pulling himself up on to the top of them. It looked pretty uncomfortable as well as precarious but he seemed really happy.

  The bathroom was a favourite spot for hide and seek. Another frequent trick of his was to hide inside the clothes horse I often used to dry my washing in the bath tub, especially during winter.

  Several times I’d been brushing my teeth or even sitting on the toilet, and suddenly noticed the clothes moving. Bob would then appear, pushing the clothes apart like curtains, his face wearing a sort of peek-a-boo expression. He thought it was great entertainment.

  Bob’s ability to get into trouble was another source of endless entertainment.

  He loved watching television and computer screens. He could while away endless hours watching wildlife programmes or horse racing. He would sit there, as if he was mesmerised. So when we walked past the gleaming new Apple store in Covent Garden one afternoon, I thought I’d give him a treat. The place was bursting with shiny new laptops and desktops, none of which I could remotely afford. But the Apple philosophy was that anyone could stroll in and play around with their technology. So we did.

  We had spent a few minutes playing with the computers, surfing the internet and watching YouTube videos when Bob spotted a screen that had a kind of aquarium-style display, with exotic and really colourful fish swimming around. I could see why he was attracted to it. It was absolutely stunning.

  I took him over to the giant screen and let him gape at it for a few moments. It was funny to watch. He would follow a particular fish as it progressed around the screen and then disappeared. He would then do a sort of double take. He couldn’t fathom what was happening and darted behind the giant screen, expecting to find the fish there. But when all he saw was a wall of silver and a tangle of leads, he darted back again and started following another fish.

  It carried on like this for minutes until he suddenly started getting frenzied and got wrapped up in a cable. I’d been temporarily distracted and turned around to see his paw wrapped around a white cable. He was pulling on it and was threatening to drag one of the giant consoles with him.

  ‘Oh God, Bob, what are you doing?’ I said.

  I’d not been the only one to spot this. A couple of Apple ‘geniuses’ were standing there laughing.

  ‘He’s a star, isn’t he?’ one of them said.

  Unfortunately, they were soon joined by another, more senior member of the team.

  ‘If he breaks anything, I’m afraid you’d have to cover the costs,’ he said. Given the prices of the products on display in the store, I wasted no time in untangling him and getting the hell out of there.

  For Bob, London is an endless source of opportunities to get up to no good. Even the underground has become a place where he can misbehave.

  When we first got together he would cling to me closely whenever we travelled underground. He didn’t like going down the escalators and lifts and felt intimidated by the crowds and the claustrophobic atmosphere during the rush hour. Over the years, however, he has conquered his fears. He even has his own identity card, given to him by the staff at Angel tube station and behaves just like any other Londoner, going about his or her business. He trots along the tunnels, always walking as near to the wall as possible, probably for security. When we get to the platform, he stands behind the yellow line, unflustered when the train pulls into the station, despite the noise it makes. He waits for it to go past him, then waits patiently for the doors to slide open before padding quietly on board and checking for an empty seat.

  Londoners are notorious for not engaging with their fellow commuters, but even the most ice-hearted melt a little when they see him sitting there, studiously taking in the atmosphere. They snap away with their camera phones then head off to work smiling. Living in London can be such an impersonal and soul-destroying existence. The idea that we are somehow lightening people’s days makes me smile.

  Travelling on the tube has its perils, however.

  One evening we’d headed home from central London and got the tube to Seven Sisters, the nearest tube station to my flat. There was a lot of maintenance and repair work being done within the tube at the time and Bob had been fascinated by the various bits of equipment and heavy-duty gear that was visible here and there.

  It was as we were coming up the escalator that I noticed Bob’s tail was sticky. When I looked at it a little closer, I could see some sort of black, tar-like material on his tail. I then saw that it was also streaked along his body, from the middle of his ribcage back to halfway along his tail.

  It was pretty obvious he’d rubbed up against something during his ride on the tube because it wasn’t there beforehand. I was at a loss to know what it was exactly. It looked like engine oil or some sort of heavy grease. It definitely looked like it had come from something mechanical. I guessed he must have rubbed up against some of the engineering equipment somehow.

  The one thing I did know was that it was potentially harmful. Bob seemed to have worked this out as well. I saw that he’d spotted the mess and had already decided that giving it a lick wasn’t a
good idea.

  My phone was low on credit but I had just about enough to make a call and rang a friend, Rosemary, a vet who had helped us out once before when Bob had been ill. She loved Bob and was always willing to help. When I explained what had happened she told me that whatever it was I needed to get it washed off.

  ‘Motor and engine oil can be highly toxic to cats, especially if it’s ingested or inhaled. It can cause really bad inflammation and burning of organs, especially the lungs. It can also cause breathing problems, seizure and even death in really bad cases,’ she said, scaring me. ‘So you really need to wash it off him. Does Bob let you bathe him?’ she said. ‘If it doesn’t come off, you should take him to the Blue Cross or another vet first thing in the morning,’ she said just before I ran out of credit and my phone cut out.

  Cats seem to fall into two categories when it comes to bath time: there are those who hate it and those that love it. Luckily, Bob falls well and truly into the second camp. In fact, he is a bit obsessed with his bath.

  He loves nothing more than climbing into the tub when I run a bath. He has learned that I always run a warm bath rather than a steaming hot one and hops into the tub so that he can paddle around in it for a few minutes.

  It is funny – and, of course, very cute – to watch him walking around afterwards as he lifts and shakes one paw at a time.

  He also gets very possessive about the bath plug and steals and hides it. I end up using a makeshift plug only to find the real plug lying on the living room floor where Bob has been playing with it.

  Sometimes I have to put a jug with a weight on it over the plug to stop him from stealing and hiding it.

  So given all that it was no problem getting him into the bath so that I could get this mystery grease off his tail.

  I didn’t have to hold him down. I used both hands to rub his tail and his side using some cat-friendly shower gel. I then hosed him down with the shower head. The expression on his face as the jets of water soaked into his body was hilarious, a mix of a grimace and a grin. Finally I dried him off as best I could with a towel. Again he didn’t need much persuasion to be rubbed down. He loved it and was purring throughout.