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

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.

There was no doubt that he regarded her home as a safe haven as well. The previous year, when he’d run away from Angel one evening after being attacked by a dog, he’d headed for Belle’s flat, even though it had been a long walk away. It had taken me hours to work out that he’d taken refuge there. It had been the longest night of my life.

The closeness of their relationship certainly made life easier for me. But it also gave Bob licence to be mischievous.

One morning I got up and headed into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, expecting to find Bob settled there. Just like at home, he tended to hang around in the kitchen early in the day, mainly in the hope of picking up any spare bits of food that might be going. There were times when he could be a real gannet.

Today, however, there was no sign of him. There was no sign of Belle either.

It had been raining heavily that morning but the weather had already cleared. It was now a really bright sunny morning and the temperature was already rising. The forecast was predicting sweltering heat later in the day. I noticed that Belle had already opened the window in the kitchen to let the fresh air into the flat.

‘Bob, where are you mate?’ I said, heading off in search of him, still wearing just my boxer shorts and a t-shirt.

There was no sign of him in the sitting room or the hallway, so I headed to the back bedroom where Belle slept. When I saw the window there was also ajar I got an instant sinking feeling.

Belle’s flat was on the first floor and the back bedroom window overlooked the roof of the extension on the ground floor flat below us. That roof overlooked a yard and, beyond it, the car park for the building. From there it was a short walk to the main road, one of the busiest in that part of north London.

‘Oh, no, Bob, you haven’t gone out there have you?’

I managed to squeeze my head through the gap in the window and scanned the rooftops below. There were extension roofs protruding all the way along the building. Sure enough, five flats along from Belle’s, there was Bob sitting, sunning himself on the roof.

When I shouted his name he slowly turned his head in my direction and gave me a confused look. It was as if he was saying: ‘what’s wrong?’

I had no problem with him sunbathing. I was more concerned with the fact that he could slide off the slippery roof, or that he might go down into the yard and from there out through the car park on to the main road.

I panicked and began taking the security screws off the window so that I could open it fully and climb out on to the roof. After a couple of minutes I was able to squeeze myself through the gap. I still hadn’t managed to put on any clothes.

The slate tiles were slippery from the rain earlier in the morning, so keeping a grip wasn’t easy, especially given the fact I was in agony with my leg. Somehow, however, I managed to scamper across the rooftops to where Bob was sitting. I was within a few feet of him when I realised that I was on a wasted mission.

Bob suddenly picked himself up and scuttled his way back across the rooftops, nonchalantly passing me. When I tried to grab at him, he just growled at me and made a sudden spurt towards Belle’s open window. Again, he shot me a disdainful look. He was soon disappearing back indoors.

I, of course, had a long way to go. It took me a few minutes to scramble back across the slippery slates. To my complete embarrassment, a couple of faces appeared in the windows. The looks on their faces spoke volumes. They were a mix of shock, mild pity and hilarity.

Moments after I got back into the safety of the flat, I heard the front door closing and saw Belle standing in the hallway with a small bag of groceries.

She burst out laughing.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ she said.

‘On the bloody roof trying to rescue Bob,’ I said.

‘Oh he goes out there all the time,’ she said with a dismissive wave of a hand. ‘He even goes down into the yard sometimes. He always comes back up.’

‘I really wish you’d told me that sooner,’ I said, shuffling off to my temporary bedroom to finally put on some clothes.

It wasn’t long before he’d turned the tables, however. Soon after that, it was Belle who was cursing his playful ways.

As I’d discovered the hard way, Bob loved exploring the back of Belle’s block of flats and took full advantage of the fact that he was on the first rather than the fifth floor.

In some ways it was a healthy thing. Bob loved going out there to do his business in the mornings and evenings. But, of course, this also allowed him to exercise his other natural instincts.

I knew that it was part of his DNA to hunt. No matter how much people might think they are cute little fluffballs, cats are also predators – seriously effective predators at that. As we settled into life at Belle’s flat, he began to bring us presents. One day we were sitting in the front room when he arrived with a small mouse dangling from his mouth. He’d placed it carefully at my feet, as if he was offering me a gift.

I’d chastised him about it.

‘Bob, you will make yourself sick again if you eat that,’ I said.

Realistically I knew there was nothing I could do, apart from keeping him under house arrest, which I didn’t want to do. And I wasn’t going to resort to putting a bell on him, at this stage, at least.

Predictably, this meant that he became a little bolder in his behaviour.

One morning, I was lying on my bed, reading, when I heard the most almighty scream. It was Belle.

‘Oh, my God, oh my God.’

I jumped up and ran into the living room where she was doing some ironing. There, sitting on top of a pile of freshly-pressed shirts and bed sheets, was a little brown frog.

‘James, James, pick it up, get rid of it. Please,’ she said, calming down slightly.

I noticed Bob standing in the doorway taking all this in. There was a strange expression on his face, what I could only call mischievousness. It was as if he knew exactly what had happened.

I got hold of the little frog and cupped it in my hands. I then walked the long way round via the front door to the area at the back of the building with Bob following me every step of the way.

I went back inside, started to read my book and forgot all about it. But then, about an hour or so later, I heard another scream, accompanied by the sound of something hitting a wall. This time it was coming from the hallway.

‘What is it now?’ I said, heading towards the kerfuffle.

Belle was standing at one end of the corridor with her hands on her head and a horrified expression on her face. She pointed down the corridor at a pair of slippers that she’d clearly thrown down the hallway.

‘It’s inside my slipper now,’ she said.

‘What’s inside your slipper?’ I said, puzzled.

‘The frog.’

I had to suppress a laugh. But, again, I retrieved the frog and took it out to the garden. Again Bob marched behind me, trying to look like it was a pure coincidence that this frog had now appeared inside the flat twice in the space of an hour or so.

‘Stay there, mate,’ I said, sensing that I had to make sure I disposed of the frog properly this time.

He looked at me disapprovingly then turned and slinked off back into the house as if to say, ‘you’re really no fun at all!’

As comfortable as we were at Belle’s, after a while I began to realise that it wasn’t ideal, in particular for my relationship with Bob.

The pain in my leg had made me short-tempered and generally less fun to be around than usual. So, perhaps inevitably, as time wore on, Bob and I had started spending less and less time together. Sensing that I was sleeping longer and wasn’t in the best of moods when I woke up, he wouldn’t always come into the bedroom for an early morning play. Often Belle would rustle up a breakfast for him instead. He would also head off out of the window to explore the back of the flats on a regular basis and would sometimes be gone for long stretches. I imagined he must be having a great time out there.

I also had a very strong suspicion that he was eating elsewhere too. He had begun arriving home from his sessions out on the roof and in the yard around supper time. But when Belle or I put down a bowl for him, he did little more than play with his food. At first my heart sank a little. He’s eating in the bins again, I said to myself. But Belle and I checked the garbage area at the back of the building and came to the conclusion there was no way he could get into the giant, locked receptacles. The explanation must lay elsewhere.

One day, when we were heading out to work, I saw an elderly gentleman downstairs, collecting his mail. Bob saw him and fixed him with a knowing stare.

‘Hello young fellow,’ the man said. ‘Nice to see you again.’

Suddenly it made sense. I remembered that children’s book Six Dinner Sid by Inga Moore, about a cat that charms its way into the affections of everyone on his street, earning himself a dinner in every house each night. Bob had pulled the same stunt. He had become Six Dinner Bob.

In a way it was a sign of how comfortable and happy he was making himself there. But it was also a sign that he was getting used to life without me at the centre of his world. Lying there at night, trying to think about anything and everything but the throbbing pain in my leg, I began to ask myself something I’d not asked in all the time we’d been together. Would he be better off without me?

It was a fair question. Who needed to be hanging around with a crippled, ex-junkie with no money and no job prospects? Who needed to be out on the streets in all kinds of weather being poked and prodded by passers-by? Especially when there were friendlier, less complicated souls around to give you a square meal every day.

I’d always felt that I could give Bob as good a life as anyone else, if not a better one. We were soul mates, two chips off the same block, I told myself. For the first time since we’d got together, I wasn’t so sure about that any more.