The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Street-wise Cat

Chapter 17 Basic Instincts

They say that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The month had barely begun but the weather was already living up to its reputation. There were days when the wind blowing down the alleyways of Soho and the West End made such a raw, rasping noise it could almost have been a lion’s roar. Some days I struggled to feel the tips of my fingers as I played my guitar. Fortunately, Bob was a little better insulated than me.

Even now with spring around the corner, he was still sporting his rather luxurious winter coat. His midriff was also still carrying some of the extra weight he’d put on over Christmas. The cold hardly seemed to bother him at all.

Bob and I missed Angel, but if I was honest, we were enjoying life more in Covent Garden.

We’d become a double act and seemed somehow more at home amongst the jugglers and fire-eaters, human statues and other street performers that roamed the Piazza and surrounding streets. It was a competitive place, of course, so, as we settled back into daily life in central London, we polished up our act.

Sometimes I would play my guitar while sitting cross-legged on the pavement with him. He’d always loved that and would drape himself across the body of my guitar, just like he’d done during our early days together, years earlier. We shook hands and he’d stand on his hind legs to collect treats. We also had a new party piece.

It had been born back at the flat one day while he had been playing with Belle. As usual, he was tossing his shabby old scraggedy mouse around. Belle wanted to take it off him so that she could give it a decent wash.

‘God knows what germs it’s collecting, Bob,’ I heard her telling him. ‘It needs a good scrubbing.’

He was reluctant to surrender his precious plaything. He always was. So she offered him a treat. Choosing between the two was a real dilemma and he dithered for a second before going for the treat. He released the mouse from his jaws long enough to receive the little snack – and for Belle to whisk the toy from under his nose.

‘Well done, Bob,’ she said afterwards.

‘Give me five,’ she said, putting her hand in the air like an American footballer or basketball player, inviting his team-mates to celebrate a score.

I was sitting there and saw him raise his paw to give her an acknowledegment. ‘That was cool,’ I laughed. ‘Bet you can’t get him to do it again.’

‘Bet I can,’ Belle said, before proceeding to do exactly that.

Since then he’d come to associate it with receiving a treat. On Neal Street it had pulled in all sorts of admirers, including some rather famous ones.

It was around 4pm on a Saturday afternoon and a couple of little girls had stopped to admire Bob. They were about nine or ten years old and were accompanied by a small group of adults, including a couple of big, burly bouncer-like guys in dark glasses. To judge by the way they were anxiously surveying the scene while the girls stroked Bob they must have been security minders.

‘Daddy, look at this,’ one of the girls said excitedly.

‘Oh yeah. That’s a cool cat,’ a voice said.

I froze to the spot. I recognised the voice immediately.

‘It can’t be,’ I said. But it was.

I turned round and standing behind me was the unmistakeable figure of Sir Paul McCartney.

I wouldn’t have expected one of the greatest figures in popular music of all time to engage with a lowly street performer. He was, after all, in a slightly different league to me when it came to knocking out a tune. But he seemed charming.

I had my early edition of the book alongside me on the floor and saw it catch his eye. I also had a wad of flyers advertising the first book signing the publishers had organised. It was now just three days away.

The event was going to mark the beginning – and probably the end – of my career as a published author. I was feeling apprehensive about it already and had been frantically handing the flyers out to anyone who showed an interest, in the hope that I’d at least avoid the embarrassment of sitting in an empty bookshop the following week. I felt sure if I fished around in the bins of Covent Garden I’d find most of them there.

Inside my head a little voice was saying oh, go on, give him one.

‘Erm, I’ve written a book about me and Bob,’ motioning to my ginger companion sitting at my feet. ‘I’m having a signing next week if you want to come along,’ I said, handing him the flyer.

To my amazement he took it.

‘I’ll take a look,’ he said.

By now a sizable crowd had begun to form around us and his minders were getting a bit twitchy. People were flashing away with their cameras. For once it wasn’t Bob they were snapping.

‘We’d better move along kids,’ the lady with him said. By now I’d worked out who she was. It was Sir Paul’s new wife, Nancy Shevell, who he’d married the previous autumn. She seemed really cool.

‘Take care man and keep it going,’ Sir Paul said as he hooked his arm into hers and rushed off with his entourage.

I was slightly dizzy afterwards. Starstruck I suppose would have been a more accurate description. I stayed in Neal Street for another hour or so but headed home on Cloud Nine.

There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of Sir Paul McCartney coming along to the signing. Why would he come? No one else was going to show up, I said to myself. All that really didn’t matter now. If it achieved nothing else and sold only five copies, the book had already allowed me to achieve the impossible. I’d chatted to a member of The Beatles.

Bob attracted so much attention these days that small crowds would often gather around us. Late on the afternoon of the Monday after I’d met the McCartneys, a dozen or so Spanish-speaking students were clustered on the pavement, each of them snapping away with their cameras and phones. It was always great to meet people, it was part of the attraction of what I did. But it could be distracting and, given the nature of street life, getting distracted was never a great idea.

As the crowd broke up and headed off in the direction of Covent Garden, I sat down on the pavement to give Bob a couple of treats. With the light already beginning to fade, the chill was really setting in again. Tomorrow was the day of the book signing in Islington. I wanted to get a reasonably early night, although I knew I wouldn’t sleep much. I also didn’t want to keep Bob out for much longer. As I stroked him, I noticed immediately that his body language was very defensive. His back was arched and his body was stiff. He wasn’t much interested in the food either which was always a sign something was wrong. Instead, his eyes were fixed on something in the near distance. Something – or someone – was clearly bothering him.

I looked across the street and saw a rough-looking character who was sitting, staring at us.

Living your life on the streets, you develop an instant radar when it comes to people. I could spot a bad apple instantly. This guy looked rotten to the core. He was a little bit older than me, in his late thirties probably. He was wearing battered jeans and had a denim jacket. He was sitting on the pavement, legs crossed, rolling up a cigarette and sipping on a can of cheap lager. It was obvious what he was looking at – and what his intentions were. He was working out how to relieve me of my money.

In the space of the last few minutes, most of the Spanish students and several others had dropped coins into my guitar case. One rather cool-looking black guy had given me £5. We’d probably collected £20 in the space of half an hour. I knew better than to leave too much money on display to the world and had scooped up most of it, slipping it in my rucksack. He’d obviously registered this.

I wasn’t going to confront him, however. As long as he kept his distance, there was no need. I’d been in his shoes myself. I knew how desperate people could get. I sensed he was trouble, but unless he proved that I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Let him cast the first stone and all that, I said to myself.

Just to make sure, however, I looked across at him and nodded, as if to say: ‘I’ve spotted you, and I know what you’re thinking. So just forget about it.’

Street people speak the same language. We can convey a hundred words with a simple look or expression, so he understood me immediately. He just growled, got himself up and slinked off. He knew he’d been rumbled and didn’t like it. He was soon heading off in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, probably to prey on someone else.

The instant the guy disappeared around the corner, Bob’s body language lightened and he had a renewed interest in the snacks.

‘Don’t worry, mate,’ I said, slipping a little biscuit into his mouth. ‘He’s gone on his way. We won’t see him again.’

The street was particularly busy that day and we’d soon collected more than enough to get Bob and me a few days’ worth of shopping in our local shop. When I started packing up, Bob didn’t need a second invitation to jump up on to my shoulders. It was getting colder by the minute.

I knew he’d need to do his business before we got the bus home, so we headed for his regular spot outside the posh office block on Endell Street.

To get to this spot we had to walk down one of the narrower and less well lit streets in the area. As we did so, the world suddenly turned quiet. London could be like that at times. One minute it was full to bursting, the next it was deserted. It was part of the city’s many contradictions.

I was halfway down the street when I felt Bob moving on my shoulder. At first I thought he was simply dying to go to the toilet.

‘Hold on for another second, mate,’ I said. ‘We’re almost there.’

But I soon realised he was repositioning himself and, unusually for him, had turned himself to look backwards rather than forwards.

‘What’s wrong, Bob?’ I said, turning around.

I looked down the street. There was a guy locking up his coffee shop for the evening and that was about it. I thought nothing more of it. The coast seemed clear enough to me.

Bob didn’t seem quite so convinced. Something was definitely bothering him.

I’d barely taken a dozen steps when all of a sudden he made the loudest noise I’d ever heard him make. It was like a primal scream, a piercing wheeeeeow followed by a really loud hissed hsssssssss. At the same time I felt a tug on my rucksack and then an almighty scream, this time from a human.

I swung round to see the bloke who had been staring at us earlier on Neal Street. He was bent over double and was holding his hand. I could see the back of it and saw that there were huge scratches. Blood was gushing from his wounds.

It was obvious what had happened. He had made a lunge for my rucksack. Bob must have dropped himself over my back and lashed out with his claws. He’d dug them deep into this guy’s hands, ripping into the skin. He was still in fighting mood too. Bob was standing on my shoulder, snarling and hissing.

But the guy wasn’t finished. He lunged at me with his fists but I managed to dodge him. It was hard to do much with Bob balanced on my shoulder, but I landed a well-directed kick to the guy’s leg. I was wearing my really heavy Dr. Martens boots so it had the desired effect and he dropped to his knees for a second.

He was soon back on his feet, though. For a moment we just stood there shouting at each other.

‘F***ing cat, look what it’s done to my f***ing hand,’ he said, waving his bleeding arm at me in the gloom.

‘Serves you right, you were going to mug me,’ I said.

‘I’ll f***ing kill it if I see it again,’ he said pointing at Bob. There was another brief standoff while the guy looked around the street. He found a small piece of wood which he waved at me a couple of times. Bob was screeching and hissing at him more animatedly than ever. The guy took one step towards us with the piece of wood then thought better of it and just tossed it to one side. After letting fly with another stream of expletives, he turned on his heels and stumbled off into the gloom, still holding his hand.

On the bus back home, Bob sat on my lap. He was purring steadily and had tucked his head under my arm, as he often did when he – or I – felt vulnerable. I guessed we were both feeling that way after our encounter, but I couldn’t be sure, of course.

That was the joy and frustration of having a cat. ‘Cats are mysterious kind of folk – there is more passing in their minds than we are aware of,’ Sir Walter Scott wrote. Bob was more mysterious than most. In many ways, that was part of his magic, what made him such an extraordinary companion. We had been through so much together, yet he still had the ability to startle and surprise me. He’d done it again this evening.

We’d had our fair share of confrontations over the years, but we’d never been attacked like this. And I’d never seen him react and defend me in that way either. I’d not been switched on to the threat this guy posed at all, but Bob had.

How had he sensed the guy was not to be trusted from the minute he set eyes on him? I could read the signs from a human perspective, but how did he know that? And how had he detected his presence when we were walking away from Neal Street? I’d seen no sign of him anywhere. Had Bob caught a glimpse of him hiding in an alleyway? Had he smelled him?

I didn’t know. I just had to accept that Bob possessed abilities and instincts that were beyond my understanding – and would probably always remain that way.

That was the frustrating part. He was exhilarating company at times, but he was also an enigma. I would never truly know what went on in his feline brain. Yes, we were best friends. We had an almost telepathic bond. Instinctively, we knew what each other were thinking at times. But that understanding didn’t extend to being able to share our deepest thoughts. We couldn’t really tell each other what we felt. As silly as it sounded, I often felt sad about that. And I did so now.

Holding him close to me as the bus lurched its way through the London traffic, I had an almost overwhelming urge to know what emotions he’d gone through back there in the side street. Had he been scared? Or had he just fallen back on his basic instincts? Had he just sensed the need to defend himself – and me – and acted? Had he just dealt with it in the moment? And did that mean that he’d already forgotten about it? Or was he thinking the same kind of thoughts as me? I am fed up with this life. I am sick of having to look over my shoulder all the time. I want to live in a safer, gentler, happier world.

I suspected I knew the answer. Of course he’d rather not be fighting off scumbags on the streets. Of course, he’d rather be sitting somewhere warm rather than freezing on a pavement. What creature wouldn’t?

As my mind ticked over, I dipped into my pocket and pulled out a scrunched up flyer. It was one of the last that I had. I’d given the rest away. It had a photo of me with Bob on my shoulders and read:

Bob looked at it and tilted his head ever-so-slightly. It was, again, as if he recognised the image of the pair of us.

I stared at the scrap of paper for what must have been a couple of minutes, lost in my thoughts.

I’d been wrestling with the same old questions for so long now. Truth be told, I was thoroughly sick of them. But tonight had brought them to the fore again. How many more times would I have to put myself and Bob in the firing line? Would I ever break this cycle and get us off the streets?

I flattened the flyer out neatly and folded it away in my pocket.

‘I hope this is the answer, Bob,’ I said. ‘I really do.’