A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen

me a few more hours to earn about half the cash I had made on a good day with Bob. It was back to the old days before Bob, but that was OK.
    It was as I walked back that evening that something began to sink in. It wasn’t all about making money. I wasn’t going to starve. And my life was much richer for having Bob in it.
    It was such a pleasure to have such great company, such a great companion. But somehow it felt like I’d been given a chance to get back on track.
    It’s not easy when you are working on the streets. People don’t want to give you a chance. Before I had Bob, if I would try to approach people in the pubs with my guitar strap on, people would go ‘no, sorry’ before I’d even had a chance to say hello.
    I could have been asking someone for the time. But they’d say to me: ‘no change, sorry’ before I opened my mouth. That happened all the time. They wouldn’t even give me the opportunity.
    People don’t want to listen. All they see is someone they think is trying to get a free ride. They don’t understand I’m working, I’m not begging. I was actually trying to make a living. Just because I wasn’t wearing a suit and a tie and carrying a briefcase or a computer, just because I didn’t have a payslip and a P45, it didn’t mean that I was freeloading.
    Having Bob there gave me a chance to interact with people.
    They would ask about Bob and I would get a chance to explain my situation at the same time. They would ask where he came from and I’d then be able to explain how we got together and how we were making money to pay our rent, food, electricity and gas bills. People would give me more of a fair hearing.
    Psychologically, people also began to see me in a different light.
    Cats are notoriously picky about who they like. And if a cat doesn’t like its owner it will go and find another one. Cats do that all the time. They go and live with somebody else. Seeing me with my cat softened me in their eyes. It humanised me. Especially after I’d been so dehumanised. In some ways it was giving me back my identity. I had been a non-person; I was becoming a person again.

Chapter 7
    The Two Musketeers

    Bob wasn’t just changing people’s attitude to me: he was changing my attitude to others as well.
    I’d never really had any responsibilities towards others in my life. I’d had the odd job here and there when I was younger in Australia and I’d also been in a band, which required a bit of teamwork. But the truth was that, since I left home as a teenager, my main responsibility had always been to myself. I’d always had to look after number one, simply because there wasn’t anyone else to do it. As a result, my life had become a very selfish one. It was all about my day-to-day survival.
    Bob’s arrival in my life had dramatically changed all that. I’d suddenly taken on an extra responsibility. Another being’s health and happiness was down to me.
    It had come as a bit of a shock, but I had begun to adapt to it. In fact, I enjoyed it. I knew it may sound silly to a lot of people, but for the first time I had an idea what it must be like looking after a child. Bob was my baby and making sure he was warm, well fed and safe was really rewarding. It was scary too.
    I worried about him constantly, in particular, when I was out on the streets. In Covent Garden and elsewhere I was always in protective mode, my instincts were always telling me that I had to watch out for him at every turn. With good cause.
    I hadn’t been lulled into a false sense of security by the way people treated me with Bob. The streets of London weren’t all filled with kind-hearted tourists and cat lovers. Not everyone was going to react the same way when they saw a long-haired busker and his cat singing for their suppers on street corners. It happened less now that I had Bob, but I still got a volley of abuse every now and again, usually from drunken young blokes who felt the fact they were picking up a pay packet at