1I’d been around cats since I was a child and I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of them. While I was growing up my family had several Siamese and I remember that at one stage we also had a beautiful tortoiseshell cat. My memories of all of them were generally fond ones, but inevitably I suppose the one that stuck most vividly in my mind was the darkest.

2I’d grown up in England and Australia and for a while we’d lived in a place called Craigie in Western Australia. While we were there we had a lovely, white fluffy kitten. I can’t remember where we got it from but I have a feeling it might have been from a local farmer. Wherever it had come from, it was a terrible home.

3For whatever reason it hadn’t been checked out medically before being handed over to us. It turned out the poor little thing was flea-ridden.

4It hadn’t been immediately apparent. The problem was that because the kitten had such thick white fur the fleas were festering in there and nobody knew. Fleas are parasites, of course. They draw the life out of other creatures to sustain their own. They basically drained this poor kitten of all its blood. By the time we spotted it, it was too late. My mother took it to the vet’s but she was told that it had passed the point of no return. It had all sorts of infections and other problems. It died within a couple of weeks of us getting it. I was five or six at the time and was devastated - as was my mother.

5I’d thought about the kitten often over the years, usually whenever I saw a white cat. But he had been on my mind a lot this weekend as I’d spent time with the tom. I could tell his coat was in a bad state. It really was threadbare in places. I had an awful feeling that it would suffer the same fate as the white kitten.

6Sitting in the flat with him that Sunday evening, I made a decision: I wasn’t going to let that happen. I wasn’t going to assume that the care I had given him was going to make him better. I wasn’t going to take anything for granted.

7I had to take him to a vet. I knew my makeshift medication wasn’t going to be good enough to heal the wound. But I had no idea what other underlying health issues he might have. I wasn’t going to take the risk of waiting, so I decided to get up early the next morning and take him to the nearest RSPCA centre, down the other end of Seven Sisters Road towards Finsbury Park.

8I set my alarm early and got up to give the cat a bowl of mashed biscuits and tuna. It was another grey morning, but I knew I couldn’t use that as an excuse.

9Given the state of his leg, I knew he wasn’t going to be up to the ninety-minute walk, so I decided to carry him and placed him in a green recycling box. It wasn’t ideal but I couldn’t find anything else. No sooner had we set off than it was clear that he didn’t like it. He kept moving, sticking his paw over the top of the box and attempting to climb out. So eventually I gave up.

10‘Come on, I’ll carry you,’ I said, picking him up with my spare arm while carrying the recycling box in the other. He was soon scrambling up on to my shoulders where he settled. I let him sit there while I carried the empty box with me all the way to the RSPCA centre.

11Inside the centre, it was like stepping into a scene from hell. It was packed, mostly with dogs and their owners, most of whom seemed to be young teenage blokes with skinhead haircuts and aggressive tattoos. Seventy per cent of the dogs were Staffordshire Bull Terriers that had almost certainly been injured in fights with other dogs, probably for people’s amusement.

12People always talk about Britain as a ‘nation of animal lovers’. There wasn’t much love on display here, that was for sure. The way some people treat their pets really disgusts me.

13The cat sat on my lap or on my shoulder. I could tell he was nervous, and I couldn’t blame him. He was getting snarled at by most of the dogs in the waiting room. One or two were being held tightly on their leashes as they strained to get closer to him.

14One by one, the dogs were ushered into the treatment room. Each time the nurse appeared, however, we were disappointed. In the end it took us four and a half hours to be seen.

15Eventually, she said, ‘Mr Bowen, the vet will see you now.’ He was a middle-aged vet. He had that kind of world-weary, seen-it-all expression you see on some people’s faces. Maybe it was all the aggression I’d been surrounded by outside, but I felt on edge with him immediately.

16‘So what seems to be the problem? ’ he asked me.

17I knew the guy was only doing his job, but I felt like saying, ‘Well, if I knew that I wouldn’t be here’ but resisted the temptation.

18I told him how I’d found the cat in the hallway of my building and pointed out the abscess on the back of his leg.

19‘OK, let’s have a quick look at him,’ he said.

20He could tell the cat was in pain and gave him a small dose of diazepam to help relieve it. He then explained that he was going to issue a prescription for a two- week course of cat-strength amoxicillin.

21‘Come back and see me again if things haven’t improved in a fortnight,’ he said.

22I thought I’d take the opportunity and ask about fleas. He had a quick look around his coat but said he could find nothing.

23‘But it’s probably worth you giving him some tablets for that. It can be a problem in young cats,’ he said.

24Again, I resisted the temptation to tell him that I knew that. I watched as he wrote a prescription out for that as well.

25To his credit, he also checked to see if the tom was microchipped. He wasn’t, which again suggested to me he was a street cat.

26‘You should get that done when you have a chance,’ he said. ‘I think he should also be neutered quite soon as well,’ he added, handing me a brochure and a form advertising a free neutering scheme for strays. Given the way he tore around the house and was so boisterous with me I nodded in agreement with his diagnosis. ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ I smiled, expecting him to at least ask a follow-up ‘why?’ But the vet didn’t seem interested. He was only concerned with tapping his notes into a computer screen and printing off the prescription. We were obviously on a production line that needed to be processed and pushed out the door ready for the next patient to come in. It wasn’t his fault—it was the system.

27Within a few minutes we were finished. Leaving the vet’s surgery, I went up to the counter at the dispensary and handed over the prescription.

28The white-coated lady there was a bit friendlier.

29‘He’s a lovely-looking fellow,’ she said. ‘My mum had a ginger tom once. Best companion she ever had. Amazing temperament. Used to sit there at her feet watching the world go by. A bomb could have gone off and he wouldn’t have left her.’

30She punched in the details to the till and produced a bill.

31‘That will be twenty-two pounds please, love,’ she said.

32My heart sank.

33‘Twenty-two pounds! Really,’ I said. I had just over thirty pounds in the whole world at that point.

34‘Afraid so, love,’ the nurse said, looking sympathetic but implacable at the same time.

35I handed over the thirty pounds in cash and took the change.

36It was a lot of money for me. A day’s wages. But I knew I had no option: I couldn’t let my new friend down.

37‘Looks like we’re stuck with each other for the next fortnight,’ I said to the tom as we headed out of the door and began the long walk back to the flat.

38It was the truth. There was no way I was going to get rid of the cat for at least a fortnight, not until he completed his course of medicine. No one else was going to make sure he took his tablets and I couldn’t let him out on the streets in case he picked up an infection.

39I don’t know why, but the responsibility of having him to look after galvanised me a little bit. I felt like I had an extra purpose in my life, something positive to do for someone—or something—other than myself.

40That afternoon I headed to a local pet store and got him a couple of weeks’ worth of food. I’d been given a sample of scientific formula food at the RSPCA and tried it on him the previous night. He’d liked it so I bought a bag of that. I also got him a supply of cat food. It cost me around nine pounds, which really was the last money I had.

41That night I had to leave him on his own and head to Covent Garden with my guitar. I now had two mouths to feed.

42Over the course of the next few days, as I nursed him back to health, I got to know him a little better. By now I’d given him a name: Bob. I got the idea while watching a DVD of one of my old favourite TV series, Twin Peaks. There was a character in that called Killer Bob. He was actually schizophrenic, a kind of Jekyll and Hyde character. Part of the time he would be a normal, sane guy, the next he would be kind of crazy and out of control. The tom was a bit like that. When he was happy and content you couldn’t have wished to see a calmer, kinder cat. But when the mood took him he could be an absolute maniac, charging around the flat. I was talking to my friend Belle one night when it dawned on me.

43‘He’s a bit like Killer Bob in Twin Peaks,’ I said, drawing a blank look from her.

44But it didn’t matter. Bob it was.

45It was pretty clear to me now that Bob must have lived outdoors. When it came to toilet time, he absolutely refused to go in the litter tray that I’d bought for him.

46Instead I had to take him downstairs and let him do his business in the gardens that surrounded the flats. He’d dash off into a bit of overgrowth and do whatever was needed then scratch up the ground to cover up the evidence.

47Watching him going through his ritual one morning, I wondered whether he’d belonged to travellers. There were quite a few of them around the Tottenham area.

48In fact, there was a camp of them on some land near my block of flats. Maybe he’d been part of a travelling family and had somehow got left behind when they moved on. He was definitely not a house cat, that much I knew now.

49There was no doubt that he was forming an affection for me. As, indeed, I was for him. At first he had been affectionate, but still a bit wary of me. But as the days passed he became more and more confident—and friendly. He could still be very boisterous and even aggressive at times. But by now I knew that was down to the fact that he needed to be neutered.

50Our life settled into a bit of a routine. I’d leave Bob in the flat in the morning and head to Covent Garden where I’d play until I got enough cash. When I got home he’d be waiting for me at the front door. He would then follow me to the sofa in the front room and watch telly with me.

51By now I was beginning to realise what a smart cat he was. I could see that he understood everything I was saying to him.

52When I patted the sofa and invited him to come and sit next to me he did. He also knew what I meant when I told him it was time for him to have his meds.

53Each time he would look at me as if to say ‘Do I have to?’ But he wouldn’t struggle while I put tablets in his mouth and rubbed his throat gently until he swallowed it.

54Most cats would go mad if you try to open their mouths. But he already trusted me.

55It was around that point I began to realise there was something rather special about him. I’d certainly never encountered a cat quite like Bob.

56He wasn’t perfect, by any means. He knew where the food lived and would regularly crash around the kitchen, knocking over pots and pans as he searched for food. The cupboards and fridge door already bore scratch marks from where he’d been frantically trying to get access to something tasty to eat.

57To be fair to him, he listened if I said no.

58All I had to do was say, ‘No, get away from there, Bob,’ and he’d slink off. Again it showed how intelligent he was. And again it raised all sorts of questions about his background. Would a feral or a street cat pay attention to what a human told them in that way? I doubted it.

59I really enjoyed Bob’s company but I knew I had to be careful. I couldn’t form too strong a friendship because sooner or later he would want to return to the streets. He wasn’t the sort of cat that was going to enjoy being cooped up permanently. He wasn’t a house cat.

60For the short term, however, I was his guardian and I was determined to try and fulfil that role to the best of my ability. I knew I needed to do all I could to prepare him for his return to the streets, so one morning I filled in the form the RSPCA vet had given me for the free neutering service. I stuck it in the post and, to my mild amazement, got a reply within a couple of days. The letter contained a certificate entitling us to a free neutering.

61The next morning I took Bob down to do his business outside again. The litter trays I’d bought him remained unsoiled and unused. He just didn’t like them.

62He headed for the same spot in the bushes adjoining the neighbouring houses.

63It seemed to be a favourite area for some reason. I suspected it was something to do with him marking his territory, something I’d read about in a science article somewhere.

64As usual, he was in there for a minute or two then spent some time afterwards clearing up after him. The cleanliness and tidiness of cats never ceases to amaze me. Why was it so important to them?

65He had satisfied himself that everything was right and was making his way out when he suddenly froze and tensed up, as if he’d seen something. I was about to go over to see what was bothering him when it became quite obvious what it was.

66All of a sudden, Bob lunged forward at lightning speed. It really did all happen in a blur. Before I knew it, Bob had grabbed at something in the grass near the hedge. I moved in to take a closer look and saw that it was a little grey mouse, no more than three inches long.

67The little fellow had clearly been trying to scurry past him but hadn’t stood a chance. Bob had pounced with lightning speed and precision and now had the creature clamped between his teeth. It wasn’t the prettiest of sights. The mouse’s legs were thrashing around and Bob was carefully repositioning its body in his teeth so that he could finish off the mouse. It wasn’t long before the inevitable happened and the little creature gave up the fight. It was at that point that Bob released it from his mouth and laid it on the ground.

68I knew what was likely to happen next but I didn’t want Bob to eat it. Mice were notorious breeding grounds for disease. So I knelt down and attempted to pick up his prey. He wasn’t too happy about it and made a little noise that was part growl and part hiss. He then picked the mouse up again.

69‘Give it to me Bob,’ I said, refusing to back down. ‘Give it to me.’ He really wasn’t too keen and this time gave me a look as if to say: ‘Why should I?’

70I fished around in my coat and found a nibble, offering him a trade. ‘Take this instead, Bob, it will be much better for you.’ He still wasn’t convinced but after a few more moments the stand-off came to a halt and he gave in. As soon as he stepped away from the mouse, I picked it up by its tail and disposed of it.

71It was another reminder of what, to me anyway, is one of the many fascinating things about cats: they are lethal predators by nature. A lot of people don’t like to think of their cute little kitty as a mass murderer, but that’s what cats are, given half a chance. In some parts of the world, including Australia, they have strict rules on cats being let out at night because of the carnage they cause in the local bird and rodent population.

72Bob had proven the point. His coolness, his speed and his skill as a killer was amazing to behold. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

73It set me thinking again about the life he must have led before he had arrived in the hallway of the block of flats. What sort of existence had it been? Where had he lived and how had he survived? Had he relied on finding and eating prey like this every day? Had he been raised in a domestic environment or had he always lived off the land like this? How had he become the cat he was today? I would love to have known. I was sure my street cat friend had a tale or two to tell.

74In many ways, this was something else that Bob and I had in common.

75Ever since I’d ended up living rough on the streets, people had wondered about my past life. How had I landed myself in this position, they’d ask me? Some did it professionally, of course. I’d spoken to dozens of social workers, psychologists and even police officers who’d quizzed me about how I’d ended up living on the streets.

76But a lot of ordinary people would ask me about it too.

77I don’t know why, but people seem to be fascinated to learn how some members of society fall through the cracks. I think it’s partly that feeling that ‘there for the grace of God go I’, that it could happen to anyone. But I think it also makes people feel better about their own lives. It makes them think, ‘Well, I may think my life is bad, but it could be worse, I could be that poor sod.’ The answer to how people like me end up on the streets is always different, of course. But there are usually some similarities. Often drugs and alcohol play a big part in the story. But in an awful lot of instances, the road that led them to living on the streets stretches all the way back to their childhoods and their relationship with their family. That was certainly the way it was for me.

78I lived quite a rootless childhood, mainly because I spent it travelling between the UK and Australia. I was born in Surrey but when I was three my family moved to Melbourne. My mother and father had separated by this time. While my father stayed in Surrey, my mother had got away from all the aggravation by landing a job selling for Rank Xerox, the photocopying company, in Melbourne. She was really good at it too, she was one of the company’s top saleswomen.

79My mother had itchy feet, however, and within about two years we had moved from Melbourne to Western Australia. We stayed there for about three or four years until I was nine or so. Life in Australia was pretty good. We lived in a succession of large bungalows, each of which had vast garden areas at the back. I had all the space a boy could want to play in and explore the world and I loved the Australian landscape. The trouble was that I didn’t have any friends.

80I found it very hard to fit in at school, mainly, I think, because we’d moved a lot.

81The chances of me settling into life in Australia disappeared when I was nine and we moved back to the UK and to Sussex, near Horsham. I enjoyed being back in England and have some happy memories of that period. I was just getting back into life in the northern hemisphere when we had to move yet again—back to Western Australia, when I was around twelve.

82This time we ended up in a place called Quinn’s Rock. It was there that I think a lot of my problems really began. Because of all this travelling around, we never lived in one house for more than a couple of years. My mother was always buying and selling, moving all the time. I never had a family home and never grew up in one place. We were definitely living some kind of gypsy-like existence.

83I’m no psychologist, although I’ve met my fair share of them over the years.

84There is no doubt in my mind that we moved home way too much, and it was not good for a growing child. It made it very hard for me to become socially adept. At school it was very hard to make friends. I was always trying too hard. I was too eager to impress, which isn’t good when you are a kid. It had the opposite result: I ended up being bullied at every school I went to. It was particularly bad in Quinn’s Rock.

85I probably stuck out with a British accent and my eager-to-please attitude. I was a sitting target, really. One day they decided to stone me. Literally. Quinn’s Rock was called Quinn’s Rock for a reason and these kids took advantage of all the nice lumps of limestone that were lying around wherever you looked. I got concussion after being bombarded on the way home from school.

86Things weren’t helped by the fact that I didn’t get on at all with my stepfather at the time, a guy called Nick. In my teenage opinion, he was a prick—and that was what I called him. Nick the Prick. My mother had met him when she joined the police back in Horsham and he had come with her out to Australia.

87We continued living this same nomadic existence throughout my early teens. It was usually connected to my mother’s many business ventures. She was a very successful woman. At one point she started doing telemarketing training videos.

88That did quite well for a while. Then she set up a woman’s magazine called City Woman, which didn’t do so well. Sometimes we’d have plenty of money and other times we’d be strapped for cash. But that never lasted for long; she was a proper entrepreneur.

89By the time I was in my mid-teens I’d pretty much quit school. I left because I was just sick to death of the bullying I encountered there. I didn’t get along with Nick either. And I was very independent-minded.

90I became a tearaway, a wild kid who was always out late, always defying my mother and generally thumbing his nose at authority, no matter what form it took.

91It wasn’t surprising that I had soon developed a knack for getting myself into trouble, something I have never quite shaken off.

92Predictably, I got into drugs, at first sniffing glue, probably to escape from reality. I didn’t get addicted to it. I only did it a couple of times after seeing another kid doing it. But it was the start of the process. After that I started smoking dope and sniffing toluene, an industrial solvent you find in nail varnish and glue. It was all connected, it was all part of a cycle of behaviour, one thing led back to another, which led back to another and so on. I was angry. I felt like I hadn’t had the best breaks.

93Show me the child of seven and I’ll show you the man, they say. I’m not so sure that you’d have spotted my future when I was seven, but you could certainly have guessed what lay ahead when I was seventeen. I was set on the road to self- destruction.

94My mother tried her hardest to get me off drugs. She could see the damage I was doing—and the even worse problems I was going to cause myself if I didn’t kick the habits I was forming. She did all the things mothers do. She went through my pockets trying to find drugs and even locked me in my bedroom a few times.

95But the locks in our house were those ones with buttons in the middle. I learned to pick them really easily with a Bobby pin. They just popped out and I was free. I wasn’t going to be hemmed in by her—or anyone else for that matter. We argued even more then, of course, and inevitably things went from bad to worse. Mum got me to go to a psychiatrist at one point. They diagnosed me with everything from schizophrenia, to manic depression to ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Of course, I thought it was all bullshit. I was a messed-up teenager who thought he knew better than everyone. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that my mother must have been worried sick. She must have felt powerless and terrified of what was going to happen to me. But I was oblivious to other people’s feelings. I didn’t care and I didn’t listen to anyone.

96The situation got so bad between us that for a while I lived in Christian charity accommodation. I just passed my time away there, taking drugs and playing guitar. Not necessarily in that order.

97Around my eighteenth birthday, I announced that I was going to move back to London to live with my half-sister from my father’s previous marriage. It marked the beginning of the downward spiral.

98At the time, it had seemed like I was setting out into the world like any normal teenager. My mother had taken me to the airport and dropped me off in the car.

99We’d come to a stop at a red light and I’d jumped out giving her a peck on the cheek and a wave goodbye. We were both thinking that I’d be gone for six months or so. That was the plan. I would stay for six months, hang out with my half-sister and pursue my grand dreams of making it as a musician. But things wouldn’t exactly go to plan.

100At first, I went to stay with my half-sister in south London. My brother-in-law hadn’t taken too kindly to my arrival. As I say, I was a rebellious teenager who dressed like a Goth and was—probably—a complete pain in the arse, especially as I wasn’t contributing to the household bills.

101In Australia I’d worked in IT and sold mobile phones but back in the UK I couldn’t land a decent job. The first I’d been able to get had been working as a bartender. But my face hadn’t fitted and they’d sacked me after using me to cover for other people’s holidays during Christmas 1997. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they wrote the dole office a letter saying I’d quit the job, which meant I couldn’t collect the benefits I was eligible for by virtue of having been born in England.

102After that I’d been even less welcome in my brother-in-law’s house. Eventually, my half-sister and he had kicked me out. I had made contact with my dad and been to see him a couple of times, but it was clear we weren’t going to be able to get on. We barely knew each other, so living there was out of the question. I started sleeping on friends’ floors and sofas. Soon I was leading a nomadic existence, carrying my sleeping bag with me to various flats and squats around London. Then when I ran out of floors I moved to the streets.

103Things headed downwards fast from there.

104Living on the streets of London strips away your dignity, your identity—your everything, really. Worst of all, it strips away people’s opinion of you. They see you are living on the streets and treat you as a non-person. They don’t want anything to do with you. Soon you haven’t got a real friend in the world. While I was sleeping rough I managed to get a job working as a kitchen porter. But they sacked me when they found out I was homeless, even though I’d done nothing wrong at work. When you are homeless you really stand very little chance.

105The one thing that might have saved me was going back to Australia. I had a return ticket but lost my passport two weeks before the flight. I had no paperwork and besides I didn’t have the money to get a new one. Any hope I had of getting back to my family in Australia disappeared. And so, in a way, did I.

106The next phase of my life was a fog of drugs, drink, petty crime—and, well, hopelessness. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I developed a heroin habit.

107I took it at first simply to help me get to sleep at night on the streets. It anaesthetised me from the cold and the loneliness. It took me to another place.

108Unfortunately, it had also taken a hold of my soul as well. By 1998 I was totally dependent on it. I probably came close to death a few times, although, to be honest, I was so out of it at times that I had no idea.

109During that period it didn’t occur to me to contact anyone in my family. I had disappeared off the face of the earth—and I didn’t really care. I was too wrapped up in surviving. Looking back at the time now, I can only imagine that they must have been going through hell. They must have been worried sick.

110I got an inkling of the grief I was causing about a year after I had arrived in London and about nine months or so after I’d taken to the streets.

111I had made contact with my father when I’d arrived in London but hadn’t spoken to him in months. It was around Christmas time that I decided to give him a call. His wife—my stepmother—had answered the phone. He refused to come to the phone and kept me waiting for a few minutes, he was so angry with me.

112‘Where the f*** have you been? We’ve all been worried sick about you,’ he said, when he had collected himself enough to talk to me.

113I made some pathetic excuses but he just shouted at me.

114He told me that my mother had been in contact with him desperately trying to find out where I was. That was a measure of how worried she’d become. The two of them never spoke. He shouted and screamed at me for fully five minutes. I realise now it was a mixture of release and anger. He had probably thought I was dead, which, in a way, I had been.

115That period of my life lasted a year or so. I’d eventually been picked up off the streets by a homeless charity. I’d stayed in various shelters. Connections, just off St Martin’s Lane, was one of them. I’d been sleeping rough in the market next door around that time.

116I ended up on what’s known as the ‘vulnerable housing’ list, which qualified me as a priority for sheltered accommodation. The problem was that for the best part of the next decade I ended up living in horrendous hostels, B&Bs and houses, sharing my space with heroin and crack addicts who would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. Everything I had was stolen at some point. I had to sleep with my most important possessions tucked inside my clothes. Survival was all I could think about.

117Inevitably, my drug dependency got worse. By the time I was in my late twenties, my habit had got so bad I ended up in rehab. I spent a couple of months getting straightened out and was then put on a drug rehabilitation programme.

118For a while, the daily trip to the chemist and the fortnightly bus ride to my drug dependency unit in Camden became the focus of my life. They became an almost reflex. I’d get out of bed and go and do one or the other on auto-pilot, as if in a daze, which, if I’m honest, I often was.

119I did some counselling there as well. I talked endlessly about my habit, how it had started—and how I was going to bring it to an end.

120It’s easy to come up with excuses for drug addiction, but I’m certain I know the reason for mine. It was pure and simple loneliness. Heroin allowed me to anaesthetise myself to my isolation, to the fact that I didn’t have family or a huge circle of friends. I was on my own and, strange and unfathomable as it will seem to most people, heroin was my friend.

121Deep down, however, I knew it was killing me—literally. So over a period of a few years I’d moved off heroin on to methadone, the synthetic opioid that is used as a substitute to wean morphine and heroin addicts off their habits. By the spring of 2007, the plan was that I would eventually start weaning myself off that and get completely straight.

122The move to the flat in Tottenham was a key part of that process. It was an ordinary apartment block full of ordinary families. I knew I had a chance to put my life back on track there.

123To help pay the rent I’d started busking in Covent Garden. It wasn’t much but it helped put food on the table and pay the gas and electricity. It also helped to keep me on an even keel. I knew it was my chance to turn the corner. And I knew I had to take it this time. If I’d been a cat, I’d have been on my ninth life.