The spring of 2009 should have been on its way, but the evenings remained dark and dismal. By the time I finished selling the
Big Issue
at Angel around seven o’clock most evenings, dusk was already descending and the streetlights were blazing into life, as were the pavements.
After being quiet during the early months of the year when there were fewer tourists around, the Angel had suddenly come alive. The early evening rush hour was as busy as I’d ever seen it with what seemed like hundreds of thousands of people pouring in and out of the tube station.
Maybe it was the well-heeled crowds. The change had attracted other people to the area as well - unfortunately.
Living on the streets of London gives you really well-developed radar when it comes to sussing out people whom you want to avoid at all costs. It was around 6.30 or 7p.m., during the busiest part of the day for me, when a guy who had set off that radar a few times loomed into view.
I’d seen him once or twice before, luckily from a distance. He was a really rough-looking character. I know I wasn’t exactly the most well-groomed guy on the streets of London, but this guy was really scraggy. He looked like he was sleeping rough. His skin was all red and blotchy and his clothes were smeared in dirt. What really stuck out about him, however, was his dog, a giant Rottweiler. It was black with brown markings and from the moment I first saw it I could tell immediately that it was aggressive. The sight of them walking around together reminded me of an old drawing of Bill Sikes and his dog Bull’s Eye in
Oliver Twist
. You could tell they were never far away from trouble.
The dog was with him this evening as he arrived near the tube station entrance and sat down to talk to some other shifty-looking characters, who had been sitting there drinking lager for an hour or more. I didn’t like the look of them at all.
Almost immediately I could see that the Rottweiler had spotted Bob and was straining at the lead, dying to come and have a go at him. The guy seemed to have the big dog under control, but it was by no means certain that it would stay that way. He seemed more interested in talking to these other guys - and getting stuck into their lager.
As it happened, I was in the process of packing up for the evening in any case. The gang’s arrival only cemented that decision in my mind. I had a bad feeling about them - and the dog. I wanted to get myself and Bob as far away from them as possible.
I began gathering up my
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s and placing my other bits and pieces in my rucksack. All of a sudden I heard this really loud, piercing bark. What happened next seemed like it was in slow motion, a bad action scene from a bad action movie.
I turned round to see a flash of black and brown heading towards me and Bob. The guy had obviously not tethered the lead correctly. The Rottweiler was on the loose. My first instinctive reaction was to protect Bob, so I just jumped in front of the dog. Before I knew it he’d run into me, bowling me over. As I fell I managed to wrap my arms around the dog and we ended up on the floor, wrestling. I was shouting and swearing, trying to get a good grip on its head so that it couldn’t bite me, but the dog was simply too strong.
Rottweilers are powerful dogs and I have no doubt that if the fight had gone on a few seconds longer, I’d have come off second best. God only knows what sorts of wounds it would have inflicted. Fortunately I was suddenly aware of another voice shouting and I felt the power of the dog waning as it was pulled in another direction.
‘Come here, you f*****,’ the owner was shouting, pulling as hard as he could on the lead. He then walloped the dog across the head with something blunt. I don’t know what it was but the sound was sickening. In different circumstances I’d have been worried for the dog’s welfare, but my main priority was Bob. He must have been terrified by what had just happened. I turned to check on him but found the spot where he’d been sitting empty. I spun around 360 degrees to see if someone had perhaps picked him up to protect him but there was no sign of him. He’d disappeared.
Suddenly, I realised what I’d done. I had a pile of
Big Issue
s a short distance away from our pitch, under a bench. Bob’s lead didn’t extend that far, so, in my anxiety to get away from the Rottweiler and his owner, I had unclipped the lead from my belt. It had only been for a second or two while I gathered everything together, but that had been long enough. That was my big mistake. The Rottweiler must have been watching it all, and Bob, and must have spotted this. That’s why he’d broken free and charged at us at that precise moment.
I was immediately thrown into a blind panic.
A few people had gathered around to ask me if I was OK.
‘I’m fine. Anyone seen Bob?’ I said, even though I wasn’t actually fine. I’d hurt myself when the Rottweiler had knocked me over and I had cuts to my hands where he’d bitten me. At that moment a regular customer of mine appeared, a middle-aged lady who often gave Bob treats. She had clearly seen the commotion and came over.
‘I just saw Bob, running off in the direction of Camden Passage,’ she said. ‘I tried to grab his lead but he was too quick.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, as I just grabbed my rucksack and ran, my chest pounding.
My mind immediately flashed back to the time he’d run off in Piccadilly Circus. For some reason though, this felt like a more serious situation. Back then he had basically been spooked by a man in a funny outfit. This time he’d been in real physical danger. If I hadn’t intervened the Rottweiler would almost certainly have attacked him. Who knows what impact the sight of the charging dog had had on him? Perhaps it was a reminder of something he’d seen in his past? I had no idea what he must be feeling, although I guessed he was as frightened and distressed as me.
I ran straight towards Camden Passage, dodging the early evening crowds milling around the pubs, bars and restaurants.
‘Bob, Bob,’ I kept calling, drawing looks from passers-by. ‘Anyone seen a ginger tom running this way with his lead trailing after him?’ I asked a group of people standing outside the main pub in the passage.
They all just shrugged their shoulders.
I had hoped that, just as he had done that time back in Piccadilly Circus, Bob would find refuge in a shop. But by now most of them were shuttered up for the evening. It was only the bars, restaurants and cafés that were open. As I made my way down the narrow lane and asked around, I was greeted by nothing but shakes of the head. If he’d gone beyond Camden Passage heading north, then he would have ended up on Essex Road, the main road leading to Dalston and beyond. He’d walked part of that route before but never at night or on his own.
I was beginning to despair when I met a woman towards the end of the Passage, a short distance before it opens out opposite Islington Green. She pointed down the road.
‘I saw a cat running down the road that way,’ she said. ‘It was going like a rocket, it didn’t look like it was going to stop. It was veering towards the main road, it looked like it was thinking about crossing.’
At the end of the passage, I emerged out on to the open street and scanned the area. Bob was fond of Islington Green and often stopped to do his business there. It was also where the Blue Cross vans would park. It was worth a look. I quickly crossed the road and ran into the small, enclosed grassy area. There were some bushes there where he often rummaged around. I knelt down and looked inside. Even though the light had gone and I was barely able to see my hand in front of me, I hoped against hope that I might see a pair of bright eyes staring back at me.
‘Bob, Bob, are you here mate?’ But there was nothing.
I walked down to the other corner of the enclosed Green and shouted a couple more times. But, apart from groans from a couple of drunks who were sitting on one of the benches, all I could hear was the insistent droning of the traffic.
I left the Green and found myself facing the big Waterstone’s bookshop. Bob and I often popped in there and the staff there always made a fuss of him. I knew I really was clutching at straws now, but maybe he had headed there for refuge.
It was quiet inside the store and some of the staff were getting ready to shut up for the evening. There were just a few people browsing the shelves.
I recognised one of the ladies behind the till. By now I was sweating, breathing heavily and must obviously have looked agitated.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘I’ve lost Bob. A dog attacked us and Bob ran off. He didn’t come in here did he?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, looking genuinely concerned. ‘I’ve been here and I’ve not seen him. But let me ask upstairs.’
She picked up the phone and dialled to the other department.
‘You haven’t seen a cat up there have you?’ she said. The slow, shake of her head that followed told me all I needed to know. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘But if we do see him we’ll make sure to keep him.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
It was only then, as I wandered back out of Waterstone’s and into the now dark evening, that it hit me. I’ve lost him.
I was in bits. For the next few minutes I was in a daze. I carried on walking down Essex Road, but by now I had given up on asking in the cafés, restaurants and pubs.
This was the route we came in every day - and went home again every night. When I saw a bus bound for Tottenham, another thought formed in my frazzled mind. He couldn’t have? Could he?
There was an inspector standing at one of the bus stops and I asked him whether he’d seen a cat getting on a bus. I knew Bob, he was smart enough to do it. But the guy just looked at me like I’d asked him whether he’d seen aliens getting on the number 73. He just shook his head and turned away from me.
I knew cats had a great sense of direction and have been known to make long journeys. But there was no way he was going to find his way all the way back to Tottenham. It was a good three and a half miles, through some pretty rough parts of London. We’d never walked that way, we’d only ever done it on the bus. I quickly decided that was simply a non-starter.
The next half hour or so was a rollercoaster of conflicting emotions. One minute I’d convince myself that he couldn’t stray far without being found and identified. Loads of people locally knew who he was. And even if he was found by someone who didn’t know him, if they were sensible they would see that he was microchipped and would know that all his data was at the national microchip centre.
No sooner had I reassured myself of that, than a stream of very different consciousness began washing over me as, all of a sudden, a nightmare series of thoughts started pinging away in my head.
This might have been what happened three years ago. This might have been how he’d come to end up in my block of flats that spring evening. This might have been the trigger for him to decide it was time to move on again. Inside I was utterly torn. The logical, sensible side of me was saying, ‘He will be OK, you’ll get him back.’ But the wilder, more irrational side of me was saying something much bleaker. It was saying: ‘He’s gone, you won’t see him again.’I wandered up and down Essex Road for the best part of an hour. It was now pitch dark, and the traffic was snarled up virtually all the way back to the end of Islington High Street. I was all at sea. I really didn’t know what to do. Without really thinking, I just started walking down Essex Road towards Dalston. My friend Belle lived in a flat about a mile away. I’d head there.
I was walking past an alleyway when I saw a flash of a tail. It was black and thin, very different to Bob’s, but I was in such a state my mind was playing tricks and I convinced myself it must be him.
‘Bob,’ I shouted, diving into the dark space, but there was nothing there.
Somewhere in the dark I heard a meowing sound. It didn’t sound like him. After a couple of minutes, I moved on.
By now the traffic had eased off. The night suddenly fell ominously quiet. For the first time I noticed that the stars were out. It wasn’t quite the Australian night sky but it was still impressive. A few weeks ago I’d been staring at the stars in Tasmania. I’d told everyone in Australia that I was coming back to care for Bob.
A fine job I’ve done of that
, I said, inwardly cursing myself.
For a moment or two I wondered whether my extended stay in Australia had actually been a factor in all this. Had that time apart loosened the ties between me and Bob? Had the fact that I’d been absent for six weeks made him question my commitment to him? When the Rottweiler had attacked, had he decided that he could no longer rely on me to protect him? The thought made me want to scream.
As Belle’s road loomed into view I was still feeling close to tears. What was I going to do without him? I’d never find a companion like Bob again. It was then that it happened. For the first time in years I experienced an overwhelming need for a fix.
I tried to bat it away immediately, but once more my subconscious started fighting a battle of wills. Somewhere inside my head I could feel myself thinking that if I really had lost Bob, I wouldn’t be able to cope, I’d have to anaesthetise myself from the grief I was already feeling.
Belle had, like me, been fighting for years. But I knew her flatmate still dabbled. The closer I got to her street, the more terrifying the thoughts in my head were becoming.