by James Bowen
I managed to get all of the nasty stuff off him. But there was still a faint stain on his tail and body. Over the next few days, however, he was able to lick it and it slowly began to disappear. I popped into the Blue Cross at Islington later that week and got them to give him a quick check up. They told me there was nothing to worry about.
‘Easier said than done, there’s always something to fret about with this one,’ I said to the nurse, realising afterwards that I’d actually begun to sound a little like a parent.
The incident on the tube reminded me of a truth that I always kept in my mind. In the years since we’d found each other, I’d domesticated Bob to a certain degree. When it came down to it though, he remained a stray cat at heart.
I can’t be 100 per cent certain, but my gut feeling is that he must have spent a large part of his young life living off his wits on the streets. He is a Londoner, born and bred, and is never happier than when he is exploring it. I often smile to myself and say ‘you can take the cat out of the street, but you can’t take the street out of the cat’.
He has a few favourite haunts. At Angel, he loves visiting Islington Memorial Green, the little park where he is free to rummage around in the bushes, sniffing out whatever caught his interest while he did his business. There are a few overgrown corners where he can discreetly disappear for a few moments of privacy. Not that privacy bothers him too much.
He is also, for instance, very fond of the grounds of St Giles in the Fields churchyard just off Tottenham Court Road. Often, when we walk from our bus stop on Tottenham Court Road towards Neal Street and Covent Garden, he starts moving around on my shoulder letting me know that he wants to make it a port of call.
The graveyard at St Giles is an oasis in the middle of one of the busiest parts of the city, with benches to sit and watch the world go by. For some reason, however, Bob’s favourite toilet spot there is actually in full view of the street, by a set of railings on a wall. He is unfazed by the flood of Londoners passing by and quietly goes about his business there.
It was a similar story when we were working on Neal Street where his preferred option was outside an office block on Endell Street. It was overlooked by several floors of conference rooms and offices, so again, wasn’t exactly the most private spot in London. But Bob felt comfortable there and always managed to squeeze himself into the shrubbery so that he could get on with things as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Wherever he goes, he is, like all cats, very methodical about it. He digs himself a decent-sized hole, places himself over it while he does the necessary, then starts scrabbling dirt to cover up the evidence afterwards. He is always meticulous in levelling it all off so that no one would know it was there. It always fascinates me to know why cats do this. I read somewhere that it’s a territorial thing.
The gardens in Soho Square were another favourite stop-off if we were working in that area. Apart from being one of the most beautiful little parks in central London, it had other attractions for Bob. Dogs were banned, for instance, which meant I could relax a little more if I let Bob off the leash. It was also a place where Bob seemed happy, especially in the summer. Bob was fascinated by birds and Soho Square park was filled with them. He would sit there, wide-eyed, staring at them, making a curious little noise, a sort of raa, raa, raa. It sounded really cute, although, in reality of course, it was probably quite sinister. I read somewhere that scientists think cats mimic eating when they see potential prey. In other words, they are practising chomping them to bits in their mouth when they catch them.
That made sense. Bob loves nothing more than chasing mice and rats and other creatures when let loose in parks. On several occasions, he’d wandered over to me with something he’d found – and probably killed – while he was roaming around.
One day, I was reading a comic book in Soho Square when he arrived with something absolutely disgusting dangling from his mouth. It was part of a rat’s head.
‘Bob, that’s going to make you really sick,’ I said.
He seemed to know this better than me. I don’t think he had any intention of eating it. Instead he took it into a corner and started playing with it, much like he played with his scraggedy mouse at home. Ninety nine times out of a hundred Bob drew admiring glances from passers-by. On that particular occasion, a few people looked at him in utter horror.
I had never been one of those cat owners who saw their pets as little angels, incapable of doing anything nasty. Far from it. I knew all too well that, like all members of his species, Bob was a predator and a highly effective one at that. If we had been living in other parts of the world, I’d have been more concerned. In parts of the USA, Australia and New Zealand, in particular, they have tried to introduce bans on cats being allowed out after dark. They claim domestic cats are doing so much damage that birdlife in particular is being endangered. That wasn’t a problem in London. So, as far as I was concerned, Bob was free to do what came naturally to him. As long as he didn’t risk hurting or harming himself.
Apart from anything else, it is great entertainment, for him – and for me.
One day, for instance, we were looking after Titch’s dog Princess again and I’d decided to take the pair of them to a small park near the flats where I live. It’s not the most glamorous green space in London. It’s got a rundown basketball court and a tree-lined area. But that was enough for them.
I was sitting on a bench with Bob on the extra-long lead I’d made for him when he suddenly spotted a grey squirrel.
Princess spotted it too and soon the pair of them were bounding towards it. The squirrel, quite sensibly, scampered up the nearest tree, but Bob and Princess weren’t deterred.
I watched them as they worked together trying to work out how to flush the squirrel out of the tree. It was like watching a SWAT team trying to winkle a bad guy out of a safe house.
Princess would let out a bark every now and again to try and rattle the squirrel. Every time the squirrel appeared or made a move, the two would adjust their positions. Bob was covering one side, leading back on to the open space towards me, while Princess was covering the squirrel’s other potential escape route at the back of the tree.
They carried on with this for twenty minutes before eventually giving up.
I’m sure some people must have thought that I was ever-so-slightly mad. But I sat there grinning and giggling away, engrossed by every captivating minute of it.
Chapter 13
Public Enemy No 1
Another summer was on its way and the midday sun was already blazing as Bob and I settled ourselves in a shady spot outside Angel tube station. I had just got out a bowl and filled it with some water for Bob when I saw two men approaching.
They were both dressed casually, in jeans and jumpers. One was in his late twenties while the other was, I guessed, a decade or so older, probably in his late thirties. Almost in unison, they produced badges from their pockets showing they were police officers, members of the CSU, Community Safety Unit for Islington.
‘Hello there, Sir. Can you tell me your name?’ the older of them asked me.
‘Erm, it’s James Bowen, why?’
‘Mr Bowen, I’m afraid we have had an allegation of assault made against you. It’s a serious matter so we are going to have to ask you to accompany us to the police station to answer a few questions,’ the younger guy said.
Plain-clothes policemen were a fairly frequent fixture on the streets and I’d encountered my fair share of them. Fortunately, unlike some of their colleagues, who could be a little aggressive and anti-Big Issue vendors, these two were perfectly polite.
When I asked if I could take a minute to pack up my pitch and sort Bob out, they told me to take as much time as I wanted. They then told me that we were going to walk towards their HQ at Tolpuddle Street.
‘Shouldn’t take us more than a few minutes,’ the younger officer said.
I was surprised at how calm I was. In the past I’d have started panicking and would
probably have protested, possibly even violently. It was a measure of how much more controlled and together I was these days. Besides, I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t assaulted anyone.
The police officers seemed pretty chilled too. As we made our way to the station, they were walking along quite happily in front of me and Bob. Occasionally one would drop back to walk with us. At one point, the younger of the two asked me whether I understood what was happening and whether I knew my rights.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said.
I knew I hadn’t been charged with anything and that I was just helping them with their enquiries. There was no need to call a lawyer or anything like that, at this stage at least.
Obviously, my mind was churning away, trying to work out who might have made this ‘allegation’. I had a few thoughts already.
The most obvious explanation was that this was someone just trying to muck up my day. Sadly, it was pretty common. I’d seen it happen to other vendors and buskers over the years. Someone with a grudge or just an evil streak would make an accusation which the police would be obliged to check out. Sometimes they’d do it simply to get the person away from their pitch and then claim it for themselves. There were a few people around who, I knew, didn’t like the fact that I’d made the tube pitch a success and would love to have taken it over. It was nasty, but it was a fact of life, unfortunately.
The other, more sinister, possibility, was that it was someone trying to undermine my book. By now pretty much everyone in The Big Issue community knew about it. More newspapers had picked up on the story and several vendors had made comments, positive and negative.
I’d been told by one of the co-ordinators that someone had been putting it around that I shouldn’t be allowed to sell the magazine any more. I knew this already because one vendor in central London had made his objections plain and to my face. He had also called me ‘a f***ing hippy poser’, which was rather charming I thought. Stupidly, I’d imagined that I was doing something positive for the magazine. Instead, it felt at times like I’d turned into every vendor’s Public Enemy No 1.
By the time we got to the station both of the police officers were on first name terms with Bob. They seemed really smitten with him, so much so that he was their first priority when we arrived at the station.
‘Right let’s get Bob settled before we take you into the custody suite,’ the older officer said.
We were soon joined by a blonde, uniformed female PC in her late twenties. She immediately focussed on Bob, who was still wrapped around my shoulders, trying to take in the unfamiliar scenery.
‘OK, is this Bob?’ she said, reaching up to him and giving him a stroke. He seemed to take an instant shine to her and was soon rubbing his face on her hand, purring away as he did so.
‘Do you think he’d mind if I picked him up?’ she said.
‘Sure, if he will come to you then go for it,’ I said, sensing that he was already really at ease with her.
As I suspected, he let her scoop him up.
‘Why don’t you come with me and we can see if we can sort you out with something nice to eat or drink?’ she said.
I watched as they headed behind the main reception desk to an office area with desks and photocopiers and fax machines. Bob was fascinated by all the red lights and buzzing machines and was happy in there. So I left him there as I headed off with the officers.
‘Don’t worry, he’s safe with Gillian,’ the younger officer said to me as we went through a set of doors into the custody suite. I felt certain he was telling the truth.
As we headed into an interview room, I suddenly felt butterflies in my stomach. It had been explained to me that I was being questioned about one of the so-called ‘trigger offences’. These were offences in which drug users or dealers committed crimes like shoplifting, robbery and assault in order to buy drugs. So as a result of this, I knew that I would probably need to be tested for drugs as well as fingerprinted.
How times had changed? A year or so earlier and I’d have been seriously concerned about this. But now I had no qualms at all as they conducted the so-called Cozart test and swabbed my mouth for traces of heroin or cocaine. I knew I was clean. I told the officers this but they said they had no option.
‘It’s regulation now I’m afraid,’ one of them said. Once that was over, they sat me down and asked me some questions.
They asked me whether I’d been in a location somewhere in Islington a day earlier. The address didn’t sound at all familiar. They then mentioned the name of a woman.
Years earlier, at the depths of my drug addiction, when I’d been arrested a couple of times for shoplifting I’d learned to simply answer ‘no comment’ to any questions like this. But I knew this was really irritating for the police, so I tried to be co-operative.
‘I’d like to help you, but I honestly don’t know what you are talking about,’ I said.
They didn’t get angry or pushy in their questioning at all. There was no ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. They just nodded at my answers, took down some notes and that was it. After about ten minutes, or less, we were done.
‘OK, Mr Bowen, well we need you to stay here for a bit while we look into this further,’ the younger officer said.
By now it had turned into a very bright, sunny afternoon outside. I was impatient to be reunited with Bob and to get back to work. But the clock kept ticking and before I knew it the shadows were lengthening. It was really frustrating and I was also worried about Bob. At one stage a duty PC offered me a cup of tea so I asked about him.
‘It’s OK, he’s with Gillian still downstairs,’ he said. ‘Think she’s been out to get him some treats, so he’s a pretty happy chappie down there.’
Eventually, the two officers who’d first approached me, came back into the interview room.
‘I’m afraid I think we’ve wasted your time and our time,’ they said. ‘The person who made this accusation on the phone hasn’t been willing to come down to give a formal statement. So there’s no corroborating evidence against you and so there will be no charges.’
I was obviously relieved. I felt angry as well, but decided to bottle it up. There was no point in making a formal complaint or threatening legal action, especially as everyone had been so decent. It was best to just get the hell out of there and get back to work.
My main concern, once more was Bob. What had they done with him for all this time?
I had to go down to the reception area to sign out. Bob was there with Gillian, looking as content as when I’d left him. But the moment he saw me his tail started swishing and his ears perked up. He leapt into my arms.
‘Gosh, someone’s pleased to see you,’ Gillian said.
‘Has he been a good boy?’ I asked her.
‘He’s been a star. Haven’t you, Bob?’ she said.
I saw that she had set him up in a corner of her office. She told me that she’d been out to the shops and bought him some cat milk, a pouch of meaty food and an enormous packet of his favourite treats. No wonder he was so happy, I thought.
We chatted for a moment or two while they got my bag and tabard from wherever it had been put during my interview upstairs. Gillian told me in normal circumstances he’d have been placed with any stray dogs that were being held.
‘If you’d been kept in overnight we’d have had to think about putting him there,’ she said. ‘But luckily that won’t be necessary now.’
I’d soon been officially released. The two officers were apologetic again.
‘Just someone being spiteful I guess,’ I said to them, shaking their hands as I left.
By the time I had left the station it was getting towards sunset. All day I’d been paranoid that someone had stolen my pitch so I headed back to Angel just to check. To my relief, there was no one there.
‘You all right, James?’ one of the flower sellers asked me.
‘Yeah, just someone’s idea of a joke. Reporting me for assault.’
‘Really? What’s wron
g with people?’ he said, shaking his head in disgust.
It was a good question, one to which I had absolutely no answer unfortunately.
Around a week to ten days later, Bob and I were selling magazines during the rush hour, when an attractive, blonde lady came up to us. Bob seemed to recognise her and arched his head towards her when she knelt down beside him.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ she said to me as she made a fuss of him.
So many faces were flashing past us each night outside the tube, it was hard to register everyone. She could obviously see I was struggling.
‘Tolpuddle Street station? I was the one who looked after Bob the other week,’ she smiled.
‘Oh, yes, of course. Sorry,’ I said, genuinely mortified. ‘It’s Gillian, isn’t it?’
‘Looks like you are both doing well,’ she said.
Community police officers had stopped to talk to us over the years, but she didn’t seem to be ‘on duty’.
She wasn’t in uniform for a start.
‘On my way home from the end of my shift,’ she said, when I mentioned this.
‘We didn’t really have much of a chance to talk when you were at the station the other day, for obvious reasons,’ Gillian said. ‘So how did you two get together?’
She smiled and laughed out loud a couple of times as I recounted our early days together.
‘Soul mates by the sound of it,’ she said.
She could tell that I was busy and that the rush hour was about to begin, so was soon on her way.
‘I might pop in and see you again if that’s all right,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I said.
She was true to her word and was soon stopping by to see us regularly, often bringing gifts for Bob. He seemed to have a genuine soft spot for her.