A Street Cat Named Bob (12 page)

I decided immediately that I didn’t want that box in the house any more. I didn’t want it there to remind and maybe even tempt me. And I definitely didn’t want it around Bob, even though it was hidden away from view.

Bob was sitting next to the radiator as usual but got up when he saw me putting my coat on and getting ready to go downstairs. He followed me all the way down to the bin area and watched me as I threw the box into a recycling container for hazardous waste.

‘There,’ I said, turning to Bob who was now fixing me with one of his inquisitive stares. ‘Just doing something I should have done a long time ago.’

Chapter 9

The Escape Artist

Life on the streets is never straightforward. You’ve always got to expect the unexpected. I learned that early on. Social workers always use the word ‘chaotic’ when they talk about people like me. They call our lives chaotic, because they don’t conform to their idea of normality, but it is normality to us. So I wasn’t surprised when, as that first summer with Bob drew to a close and autumn began, life around Covent Garden started to get more complicated. I knew it couldn’t stay the same. Nothing ever did in my life.

Bob was still proving a real crowd-pleaser, especially with tourists. Wherever they came from, they would stop and talk to him. By now I think I’d heard every language under the sun - from Afrikaans to Welsh – and learned the word for cat in all of them. I knew the Czech name,
kocka
and Russian,
koshka
; I knew the Turkish,
kedi
and my favourite, the Chinese,
mao
. I was really surprised when I discovered their great leader had been a cat!

But no matter what weird or wonderful tongue was being spoken, the message was almost always the same. Everyone loved Bob.

We also had a group of ‘regulars’, people who worked in the area and passed by on their way home in the evening. A few of them would always stop to say hello. One or two had even started giving Bob little presents.

It was the other ‘locals’ who were causing the problems.

To begin with I’d been getting a bit of hassle over at James Street from the Covent Guardians. I’d been continuing to play next to the tube station. On a couple of occasions a Guardian had come over and spoken to me. He’d laid down the law, explaining that the area was for painted statues. The fact that there didn’t seem to be any around at that moment didn’t bother him. ‘You know the rules,’ he kept telling me. I did. But I also knew rules were there to be bent a little when they could be. Again, that was life on the streets. If we were the kind of people who stuck to the rules, we wouldn’t have been there.

So each time the Guardian moved me on, I’d head off elsewhere for a few hours then quietly slip back into James Street. It was a risk worth taking as far as I was concerned. I’d never heard of them calling in the police to deal with someone performing in the wrong place.

The people who were bothering me much more were the staff at the tube station who also now seemed to object to me busking outside their workplace. There were a couple of ticket inspectors in particular who had begun giving me a hard time. It had begun as dirty looks and the odd casual comment when I set myself up against the wall of the tube station. But then one really unpleasant inspector, a big, sweaty guy in a blue uniform, had come over to me one day and been quite threatening.

By now I had come to realise that Bob was a great reader of people. He could spot someone who wasn’t quite right from a distance. He had spotted this guy the minute he started walking in our direction and had started squeezing himself closer to me as he approached.

‘All right, mate?’ I said.

‘Not really. No. You had better piss off - or else,’ he said.

‘Or else what?’ I said, standing my ground.

‘You’ll see,’ he said obviously trying to intimidate me. ‘I’m warning you.’

I knew he had no power outside the tube station and was just trying to spook me. But afterwards I’d made the decision that it might be smart to stay away for a while.

So at first I’d moved to the top of Neal Street, near the junction with Long Acre, still no more than a healthy stone’s throw from the tube station but far enough to be out of sight of the staff. The volume of people passing there wasn’t as great – or always as well-meaning – as the people around Covent Garden. Most times I worked there I’d get some idiot kicking my bag or trying to scare Bob. I could tell he wasn’t comfortable there: he’d curl up in a defensive ball and narrow his eyes to a thin slit whenever I set up there. It was his way of saying: ‘I don’t like it here.’

So after a few days, rather than heading towards Covent Garden as usual, Bob and I climbed off the bus and walked through Soho in the direction of Piccadilly Circus instead.

Of course, we hadn’t left central London - and the borough of Westminster - so there were still rules and regulations. Piccadilly worked in a similar way to Covent Garden; there were certain areas that were designated for buskers. This time I decided to stick to the rules. I knew that the area to the east of Piccadilly Circus on the road leading to Leicester Square was a good spot, specifically for buskers. So I headed there.

Arriving there with Bob, I picked a spot only a few yards away from one of the main entrances to the Piccadilly Circus tube station, outside the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not exhibition.

It was a really busy late afternoon and evening with hundreds of tourists on the street, heading to the West End’s cinemas and theatres. We were soon doing all right, despite the fact that people move so fast around that area, running down the tube entrance. As usual, they slowed down and sometimes stopped when they saw Bob.

I could tell Bob was a little nervous because he curled himself up even tighter than usual around the bridge of my guitar. It was probably the number of people and the fact that he was in unfamiliar surroundings. He was definitely more comfortable when he was in a place that he recognised.

As usual, people from all over the world were milling around, taking in the sights of central London. There were a lot of Japanese tourists in particular, a lot of whom were fascinated by Bob. I’d soon learned another new word for cat:
neko.
Everything was fine until around six in the evening, when the crowds really thickened with the beginning of the rush hour. It was at that point that a promotions guy from Ripley’s came out on to the street. He was wearing a big, inflatable outfit that made him look three times his normal size and was making big arm gestures encouraging people to visit Ripley’s. I had no idea how it related to the exhibits inside the building. Maybe they had something on the world’s fattest man? Or the world’s most ridiculous job?

But I could tell immediately that Bob didn’t like the look of him. I sensed him drawing in even closer to me when he first appeared. He was really unsure of the bloke and was staring at him with a look of slight trepidation. I knew exactly where he was coming from; he did look a bit freaky.

To my relief, after a while Bob settled down and seemed to forget about the man. For a while we just ignored him as he carried on trying to persuade people to step into Ripley’s. He was having some success, so he stayed away from us. I was singing a Johnny Cash song, ‘Ring of Fire’, when, for no particular reason, the promotions guy suddenly approached us, pointing at Bob as if he wanted to come and stroke him. I didn’t spot him until he was almost upon us, leaning down in his weird inflatable suit. And by then it was too late.

Bob’s reaction was instantaneous. He just sprung up and bolted, running into the crowds with his new lead trailing behind him. Before I could even react, he’d disappeared, heading towards the entrance to the tube station.

Oh shit
, I said to myself, my heart pumping.
He’s gone. I’ve lost him
.

My instincts took over at once. I jumped up straight away and ran after him. I just left the guitar. I was much more worried about Bob than an instrument. I could find one of those anywhere.

I immediately found myself in a sea of people. There were weary-looking office workers heading down the tube at the end of a day’s work, early evening revellers arriving for a night ‘up West’ and, as always, loads and loads of tourists, some with rucksacks, others clutching streetmaps, all looking a little overwhelmed at finding themselves at the beating heart of London. I had to bob and weave my way through them to even get to the entrance to the tube station. Inevitably, I bumped into a couple of people, almost knocking over one lady.

It was impossible to see anything through the constant wall of people that was moving towards me, but as I finally got to the bottom of the steps inside the concourse, things began to thin out a little bit. It was still heaving with people, but at least I could now stop and take a look around. I got down on my haunches and looked around at floor level. One or two people gave me strange looks but that didn’t concern me.

‘Bob, Bob, where are you, mate?’ I shouted at one point, immediately realising how futile that was with all the noise in there.

I had to make a guess and head in one direction. Should I go towards the barriers that led to the escalators and down to the trains or move towards the various other exits? Which way would Bob go? My hunch was that he wouldn’t go down the tube. We’d never been down there together and I had a feeling the moving escalators would frighten him.

So I moved towards the exits for the other side of Piccadilly Circus.

After a moment or two, I got a glimpse of something, just the faintest flash of ginger on one of the staircases. I then saw a lead trailing after it.

‘Bob, Bob,’ I shouted again, squeezing myself through the crowds once more as I headed in that direction.

I was now within thirty feet of him but I might as well have been a mile away, the crowds were so thick. There were streams of people coming down the staircase.

‘Stop him, step on his lead,’ I shouted out, catching another glimpse of ginger in the evening light above me.

But no one was taking any notice. No was paying any attention.

Within moments the lead had disappeared and there was no sign of Bob. He must have reached the exit, which led to the bottom of Regent Street and run off from there.

By now a million thoughts were flashing through my head, none of them good ones. What if he had run out into the road at Piccadilly Circus? What if someone had seen him and picked him up? As I barged my way up the stairs and reached street level again I was in a real state.

Truth be told, I could have burst into tears, I was so convinced that I’d never see him again.

I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I felt awful. Why the hell hadn’t I fixed his lead to my rucksack or on to my belt so that he couldn’t run any further than the length of his lead? Why hadn’t I spotted his panic when the Ripley’s guy had first appeared and moved somewhere else? I felt sick.

Again I had to make a choice. Which way would he have headed on hitting the streets? He could have turned left towards Piccadilly or even headed into the giant Tower Records store there. Again I trusted my instincts and guessed that he would have basically headed straight on – down the wider pavements of Regent Street.

Still in a complete panic, I began making my way down the street in the hope that someone had seen him.

I knew I must have been looking absolutely crazed because people were looking at me askance. Some were even moving out of my way, as if I was some deranged gunman on the rampage.

Fortunately, not everyone reacted that way.

After about thirty yards, I asked a young girl who was walking down the road with a bag from the Apple store at the Oxford Street end of Regent Street. She’d obviously walked all the way down the street, so I asked her if she’d seen a cat.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘I saw a cat weaving along the street. Ginger. Had a lead hanging behind it. One bloke tried to stamp on the lead and catch it but the cat was too quick for him.’

My immediate reaction was joy. I could have kissed her. I just knew it was Bob. But that quickly gave way to paranoia. Who was that bloke who’d tried to catch him? What was he planning to do with him? Would that have frightened Bob even more? Was he now cowering somewhere where I’d never find him?