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

Chapter 6 The Garbage Inspector

We all have our obsessions in life. For Bob, it’s packaging.

The assorted collection of boxes, cartons, wrapping papers and plastic bottles which we use during our day-to-day life around the flat, absolutely fascinate him. And some materials fixate him more than others.

Bubble wrap, naturally, is a source of endless entertainment. What child doesn’t love popping the bubbles? Bob goes absolutely crazy with excitement whenever I let him play with a sheet of it. I always keep a watchful eye on him. Each time he pops a cell with his paw or mouth, he turns and gives me a look as if to say ‘did you hear that?’

Wrapping paper is another fascination. Whenever I unwrap a present for him, he shows more interest in playing with the fancy paper than with the actual toy itself. He is also endlessly obsessed by the crispy, crunchy cellophane used inside cereal packets and by supermarkets to wrap bread. It never ceases to amaze me, but he can spend half an hour rustling a ball of cellophane. Balls of scrunched up aluminium kitchen foil have the same effect.

There is, however, no question about his absolute favourite type of packaging: cardboard boxes. He basically sees every box he comes across as a toy, an object designed to provide him with hours of fun. If I ever walk past Bob with a cardboard box in my hand he lunges at me as if to grab it. It doesn’t matter whether it is a cereal box, a milk carton or a bigger box, he bounds up, paddling his paws quickly as if to say ‘give me that, I want to play with it NOW’.

He also loves hiding away in the bigger boxes, a habit that has given me a case of the heebeegeebees on at least one occasion.

I don’t let Bob wander out of our flat on his own and the windows are always closed to avoid him climbing out. (I knew cats had the ability to ‘self-right’ themselves in the air and we were ‘only’ five floors up, but I didn’t want to test his flying abilities!) So when, one summer evening, I couldn’t find him in any of his usual spots I panicked slightly.

‘Bob, Bob, where are you mate?’ I said.

I looked high and low, a process that didn’t take too long given the smallness of my flat. But there was no sign of him in my bedroom or in the kitchen or bathroom. I was beginning to genuinely worry about his welfare when it suddenly struck me that I’d put a box containing some hand-me-down clothes I’d been given by a charity worker in the airing cupboard. Sure enough, I opened the cupboard to see a distinctive ginger shape submerged in the middle of the box.

He’d done the same thing again not long afterwards, with almost disastrous consequences.

Belle had come around to help me tidy the place up a bit. It wasn’t the most organised and orderly of homes, at the best of times. It didn’t help that, for years I had been a bit of a magpie. I don’t know whether I subconsciously harboured dreams of opening a junk shop or whether I was just fascinated by old stuff, but somehow I’d collected all sorts of bits and bobs, everything from old books and maps, to broken radios and toasters.

Belle had persuaded me to chuck out some of this old tat and we’d organised a few cardboard boxes full of them. We were going to throw some in the rubbish but take others to charity shops or the local recycling place. Belle was taking one box down to the rubbish area outside the flats and was waiting for the lift to arrive when she felt her box jiggling around. It freaked her out a bit and I heard her scream from inside my flat. By the time I opened the door to see what the trouble was she’d dropped the box to the floor and discovered Bob inside. He was extricating himself from a collection of old books and magazines where he’d curled up for a nap.

Soon after that I’d actually made him a bed out of a cardboard box. I’d figured that if he slept in one he might be less obsessed with them at other times. I’d taken one side off a box then lined it with a little blanket. He was as snug as a bug in there. He loved it.

It didn’t entirely get rid of his obsession, however. He remained deeply interested in the rubbish bin in the kitchen. Whenever I put something into the bin he would get up on his hind legs and stick his nose in. If I ever challenged him he would throw me a look as if to say ‘hey, what are you throwing in there? I haven’t decided if I want to play with that or not.’ For a while, I started jokingly calling him the garbage inspector. It wasn’t always a laughing matter, however.

I was just emerging from the bath one morning when I heard weird noises coming from the kitchen. I could make out a thin, metallic, scraping sound, as if something was being dragged around. It was accompanied by a kind of low moaning sound.

‘Bob, what are you up to now?’ I said, grabbing a towel to dry my hair as I went to investigate.

I couldn’t help giggling at the sight that greeted me.

Bob was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with an empty tin of cat food wedged on the top of his head. The tin was sitting at a jaunty angle on his head right over his eyeline. He looked like a cross between the Black Knight from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail and a Welsh guard outside Buckingham Palace with his bearskin hat hanging over his eyes.

It was obvious that he couldn’t see much because he was walking backwards across the kitchen floor, dragging the tin with him in an attempt to reverse himself out of it. He was being very deliberate, padding backwards one careful step at a time, occasionally wiggling the tin or raising it a little before giving it a tap against the floor in the hope the impact would dislodge it. His plan wasn’t working. It was comical to watch.

It didn’t take Hercule Poirot or Columbo to work out what had happened. In the corner of the room I could see the black bin liner containing the rubbish I was going to put in the wheelie bins downstairs this morning. I normally emptied the bin and put the sack out at night, specifically to stop Bob playing with it. But for some reason today I’d forgotten and left it on the kitchen floor. Big mistake.

Bob had clearly taken advantage of my absence and ripped and chewed at the bottom of the bag so that he could try his luck rummaging in the waste. He’d drawn a blank on the cardboard front, but he had found the old tin. Unfortunately for him, in his enthusiasm to explore its contents, he’d got his head stuck in there. It was the kind of thing you saw on YouTube or video clip programmes like You’ve Been Framed all the time. He’d got himself in a terrible mess and was letting out this rather sad and pathetic little moaning sound. It wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. One day I’d been sitting in the living room when I heard another odd sound coming from the kitchen, a kind of tapping sound. Pat… pat… pat followed by a faster pat, pat, pat, pat.

I’d found Bob walking around with a miniature container of butter attached to one of his paws. He loved butter so had obviously found this and been dipping his paw in so that he could lick it clean. He’d somehow wedged the paw inside the container and was now walking around with it attached. Every now and again, he’d raise his paw and tap it against a cupboard door in an effort to dislodge it. Eventually I’d had to help him remove it. I could see I would have to do the same thing here.

He was clearly feeling a little bit sorry for himself and knew he’d done something stupid.

‘Bob, you silly boy. What have you done to yourself?’ I said, leaning down to help him. Thank goodness he hadn’t shoved his head all the way inside the tin, I thought. It had a serrated edge where it had been opened so I was careful in removing it from his head. I smelled inside the tin. It wasn’t the most pleasant odour I’d ever encountered, that was for sure.

The instant I extricated the top of his head from the tin, Bob scooted off into the corner. There were bits of food stuck to his ear and the back of his head so he began licking and washing himself frantically. As he did so he kept shooting me rather sheepish looks, as if to say: ‘yes, I know it was a dumb thing to do. Don’t tell me you’ve never done anything stupid yourself.’

As we headed off into work an hour or so later, he was still wearing the same, rather embarrassed expression and I was still smiling to myself about it.

The first sign that something was amiss came a few days later when he began eating more than usual. Bob’s daily diet had been a well-established routine for a long time now. Even though money was tight, I always tried to feed him decent ‘Scientific Formula’ food from the most popular cat food brands. I’d ration it carefully, following the recommended portions. So in the morning he had a flat tea cup full of high-nutrition biscuits and at the end of the day, about an hour before his bed time, he’d then have a further half a tea cup of biscuits along with half a pouch of meat as his evening meal.

These two meals would be supplemented by the little snacks he had while we were out working. It was always more than sufficient to keep him happy and healthy. In fact, he normally left a quarter or so of his morning biscuits because it was too much for him. Sometimes he’d leave it there, at other times he’d eat it just before we headed out to work, as a mid-morning snack.

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.