From Addiction in Australia, to Being Sober On The Streets In London---Meeting Bob Was the Best Thing Ever!!! By James Bowen

 

There is something about the presence of a cat … 

that seems to take the bite out of being alone. --Louis Camuti

If man could be crossed with the cat, 

it would improve man but deteriorate the cat. --Mark Twain

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 bathtub, 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...

!!!

Tiny, Ready, and Freddie

I had briefly saw the cover of this book and went out to get it...Adding to my TBR library... I didn't know, however, that I would pick this book one night recently to start reading after I had finished a book I really didn't like--a rare occasion for me, as you've probably guessed. I needed an immediate joyful diversion and

saw Bob smiling up at me... Yes! Just gazing at the cover made me smile and calm down... I had not yet called my babies--3 triplets--in to escape the still cold nights where I live, so I opened the book, highlighting the several quotes about cats, agreeing with them, of course... and then starting to read...It was clear from the very beginning that Bob had chosen his person himself, whose name happens to be the author of this book, James Bowen. I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of cats who actually have chosen me--maybe I'll write a couple of short stories about them. Most of my cats are perfect blends of the male and females who have born here at my cabin--or dropped off...starting with the small brownish-black long-hair that had been at the cabin before I was even living here, but who had been fed by my brother-in-law. She had her first litter shortly after I had moved in with my three cats...

In many ways, this book can also be considered an ongoing memoir by Bowen as he shares not only stories about his new soulmate, Bob, but his life as a street person, homeless, and trying to make a living at the beginning, obviously from begging, or stealing... He had become hooked on drugs early in life while living in Australia. This book begins while he is now living in London, has managed to have a small room, and is now totally clean from drugs... Still, with the stigma of his past as well as what the drugs had done to his body, he was forced to work on the streets to gain enough money to keep living--barely...

At first, I was impressed when I learned about the various services that London provided for the homeless, including a way to make money on the streets, and access to health care, even for Bob, the cat... But, of course, just as in America, there are always "those" people who have to make it hard for anybody that is different in some way. From shouting that strumming on a guitar was too loud or making false complaints about one vendor, for one reason, or another, or to even lost status of contract if a boss wants to give a favor to a buddy...Somehow, somewhere, people have forgotten all about the needs of anybody else other than themselves... How very sad...

But that rarely will happen when you have a cat... I would describe it as it happened, but you really need to read how Bob prevented a robbery of the day's earnings after noticing a man watching, smelling his evil or hatred... or whatever an animal has to instinctively know that somebody was dangerous... Bob, normally riding on the shoulders of James, as they left for home, had actually turned around to sit backward on the backpack and attack  the thief who was trying to grab today's sales!

Or the time that James was very sick with coughing, fearing to go to the doctor, that it might be really bad...only to have Bob begin to gently approach James while he was laying down, and spread his body across James' chest... Yep! you guessed it, when he went for an x-ray, the chest was clear of any permanent issues and after a short medication addition, he was fine again... 

Bob and James went everywhere together. James provided security, while Bob added a new and fun dimension to both his life as well as to his work activities...Bob began to get a following, including the daughters of a member of the Beatles! (Just had to share my favorite Beatles Song... Something in the Way She Moves...and by the way, Tom Jones was once a heartthrob of mine, too, so I had to play one of his hits first, LOL)

While this book was my first from James Bowen, I've noticed that he has written many others which I'll check out from time to time when I need another "fix" from this chaotic world in which we live. I do want to point out that, Bowen is a natural storyteller... He moves from event to event and chapter to chapter without any sense of confusion, forever singing the praise of Bob and all that the two of them have found--together! I can imagine he and I becoming friends and perhaps Bob might one day come to visit the Cabin Cats who live somewhere in Pennsylvania... there's about 12 kittens and cats at any given time enjoying the four seasons of Our Father's World...happy to have found someone to love and to be loved by... Isn't that what's life all about!?

This book needs to be read by people for many reasons... Especially now when government is spending more time trying to crush our lives, our joy in living, we need a cat or two or three to realize that there's always somebody out there needing to love and be loved and cared for. James Bowen found Bob and hasn't stopped talking about him!

I snapped a pic of this last sketch in the book. There are several others and are wonderful line drawings by Dan Williams...

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