1One Thursday morning, a few weeks after we had started our busking partnership in Covent Garden, I got up earlier than usual, made us both some breakfast and headed out of the door with Bob. Rather than heading for central London as usual, we got off the bus near Islington Green.

2I’d made a decision. With him accompanying me almost every day on the streets now, I needed to do the responsible thing and get Bob microchipped.

3Microchipping cats and dogs used to be a complicated business but now it’s simple. All it requires is a simple surgical procedure in which a vet injects a tiny chip into the cat’s neck. The chip contains a serial number, which is then logged against their owner’s details. That way if a stray cat is found people can scan the chip and find out where it belongs.

4Given the life Bob and I led, I figured it was a good idea to get it done. If, God forbid, we ever got separated, we’d be able to find each other. If worse came to worst and something happened to me, at least the records would show that Bob wasn’t a completely feral street cat; he had once been in a loving home.

5When I’d first begun researching the microchipping process in the library I had quickly come to the conclusion that I couldn’t afford it. Most vets were charging an extortionate sixty to eighty pounds to insert a chip. I just didn’t have that kind of money and, even if I did, I wouldn’t have paid that much on principle.

6But then one day I got talking to the cat lady across the street.

7‘You should go along to the Blue Cross van in Islington Green on a Thursday,’ she said. ‘They just charge for the cost of the chip. But make sure you get there early. There’s always a big queue.’

8So I’d set off today nice and early to get to that morning’s clinic, which I knew ran from 10a.m. to noon.

9As the cat lady had predicted, we discovered a lengthy queue when we got to Islington Green. A long line stretched down towards the big Waterstone’s bookshop. Luckily it was a bright, clear morning so it wasn’t a problem hanging around.

10There was the usual collection you find in a situation like that; people with their cats in posh carriers, dogs trying to sniff each other and being a general nuisance.

11But it was quite sociable and it was certainly a smarter, more caring crowd than at the RSPCA where I’d first taken Bob to be checked out.

12What was funny was that Bob was the only cat that wasn’t in a carrier, so he attracted a lot of attention—as usual. There were a couple of elderly ladies who were absolutely smitten and kept fussing over him.

13After about an hour and a half queuing, Bob and I reached the front of the line where we were greeted by a young veterinary nurse with short bobbed hair.

14‘How much will it cost to get him microchipped? ’ I asked her.

15‘It’s fifteen pounds,’ she replied.

16It was pretty obvious from my appearance that I wasn’t exactly rolling in money.

17So she quickly added, ‘But you don’t have to pay it all up front. You can pay it off over a few weeks. Say two pounds a week, how’s that?’ ‘Cool,’ I said, pleasantly surprised. ‘I can do that.’ She gave Bob a quick check, presumably to make sure he was in decent-enough health, which he was. He was looking a lot healthier these days, especially now that he had fully shed his winter coat. He was lean and really athletic.

18She led us into the surgery where the vet was waiting. He was a young guy, in his late twenties, probably.

19‘Morning,’ he said to me before turning to chat to the nurse. They had a quiet confab in the corner and then started preparing for the chipping procedure. I watched as they got the stuff together. The nurse got out some paperwork while the vet produced the syringe and needle to inject the chip. The size of it slightly took my breath away. It was a big old needle. But then I realised it had to be if it was going to insert the chip, which was the size of a large grain of rice. It had to be large enough to get into the animal’s skin.

20Bob didn’t like the look of it at all, and I couldn’t really blame him. So the nurse and I got hold of him and tried to turn him away from the vet so that he couldn’t see what he was doing.

21Bob wasn’t stupid, however, and knew something was up. He got quite agitated and tried to wriggle his way out of my grip. ‘You’ll be OK, mate,’ I said, stroking his tummy and hind legs, while the vet closed in.

22When the needle penetrated, Bob let out a loud squeal. It cut through me like a knife and for a moment I thought I was going to start blubbing when he began shaking in pain.

23But the shaking soon dissipated and he calmed down. I gave him a little treat from my rucksack then carefully scooped him up and headed back to the reception area.

24‘Well done, mate,’ I said.

25The nurse asked me to go through a couple of complicated-looking forms.

26Fortunately the information she wanted was pretty straightforward.

27‘OK, we need to fill in your details so that they are on the database,’ she said.

28‘We will need your name, address, age, phone number all that kind of stuff,’ she smiled.

29It was only as I watched the nurse filling in the form that it struck me. Did this mean that I was officially Bob’s owner?

30‘So, legally speaking, does that mean I am now registered as his owner? ’ I asked the girl.

31She just looked up from the paperwork and smiled. ‘Yes, is that OK?’ she said.

32‘Yeah, that’s great,’ I said slightly taken aback. ‘Really great.’ By now Bob was settling down a little. I gave him a stroke on the front of the head. He was obviously still feeling the injection so I didn’t go near his neck, he’d have scratched my arm off.

33‘Did you hear that, Bob? ’ I said. ‘Looks like we’re officially a family.’ I’m sure I drew even more looks than usual as we walked through Islington afterwards. I must have been wearing a smile as wide as the Thames.

34Having Bob with me had already made a difference to the way I was living my life. He’d made me clean up my act in more ways than one.

35As well as giving me more routine and a sense of responsibility, he had also made me take a good look at myself. I didn’t like what I saw.

36I wasn’t proud of the fact I was a recovering addict and I certainly wasn’t proud of the fact that I had to visit a clinic once a fortnight and collect medication from a pharmacy every day. So I made it a rule that, unless it was absolutely necessary, I wouldn’t take him with me on those trips. I know it may sound crazy, but I didn’t want him seeing that side of my past. That was something else he’d helped me with; I really did see it as my past. I saw my future as being clean, living a normal life. I just had to complete the long journey that led to that point.

37There were still plenty of reminders of that past and of how far I had still to travel. A few days after I’d had him microchipped, I was rummaging around looking for the new Oyster card that had come through the post when I started emptying the contents of a cupboard in my bedroom.

38There, at the back of the cupboard, under a pile of old newspapers and clothes, was a plastic Tupperware box. I recognised it immediately, although I hadn’t seen it for a while. It contained all the paraphernalia I had collected when I was doing heroin. There were syringes, needles, everything I had needed to feed my habit. It was like seeing a ghost. It brought back a lot of bad memories. I saw images of myself that I really had hoped to banish from my mind forever.

39I 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.

40Bob 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.

41‘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

42The Escape Artist.

43Life 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.

44Bob 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!

45But no matter what weird or wonderful tongue was being spoken, the message was almost always the same. Everyone loved Bob.

46We 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.

47One or two had even started giving Bob little presents.

48It was the other ‘locals’ who were causing the problems.

49To 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.

50So 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.

51The 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.

52By 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.

53‘All right, mate? ’ I said.

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

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

56‘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.

57So 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.’

58So 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.

59Of 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.

60So I headed there.

61Arriving 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.

62It 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.

63I 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.

64As 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.

65Everything 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?

66But 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.

67To my relief, after a while Bob settled down and seemed to forget about the man.

68For 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.

69Bob’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.

70Oh shit, I said to myself, my heart pumping. He’s gone. I’ve lost him.

71My 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.

72I 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.

73It 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.

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

75I 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.

76So I moved towards the exits for the other side of Piccadilly Circus.

77After 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.

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

79I 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.

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

81But no one was taking any notice. No was paying any attention.

82Within 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.

83By 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.

84Truth be told, I could have burst into tears, I was so convinced that I’d never see him again.

85I 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.

86Again 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.

87Still in a complete panic, I began making my way down the street in the hope that someone had seen him.

88I 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.

89Fortunately, not everyone reacted that way.

90After 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.

91‘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.’

92My immediate reaction was joy. I could have kissed her. I just knew it was Bob.

93But 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?

94With all these new thoughts bouncing around in my head, I carried on down Regent Street, sticking my head into every shop I passed. Most of the shop assistants looked horrified to see this long-haired figure standing in their doorways and took a step back. Others just flashed me blank expressions and slow shakes of the head. I could see what they were thinking. They thought I was some piece of dirt that had just blown in off the street.

95After about half a dozen shops, my mood began to swing again, this time back towards resignation. I had no idea how long it was since Bob had run off. Time had seemed to slow down. It was as if it was all happening in slow motion. I was close to giving up.

96A couple of hundred yards down Regent Street, there was a side street ahead leading back down to Piccadilly. From there he could have headed in any one of a dozen directions: into Mayfair or even across the road down to St James’s and Haymarket. If he’d gone that far then I knew he was lost.

97I was about to give up and head down the side street, when I stuck my head into a ladies’ clothes shop. There were a couple of shop assistants there looking a bit perplexed and looking towards the back of the shop.

98They turned to see me and the moment I said the word ‘cat’ their faces lit up.

99‘A ginger tom? ’ one of them said.

100‘Yes, he’s got a collar and lead. ’

101‘He’s round the back here,’ one of them said, gesturing for me to come in and shut the door.

102‘That’s why we shut the door,’ the other one said. ‘We didn’t want him to get run over.’

103‘We figured someone was looking for him because of the lead. ’ They led me towards a row of open wardrobes filled with fancy-looking clothes. I noticed the prices on some of them. Each one cost more money than I’d make in a month. But then, in the corner of one of the wardrobes, curled up in a ball, I saw Bob.

104As time had slowed down during the past few minutes, a part of me had wondered whether he was trying to get away from me. Maybe he’d had enough of me? Maybe he didn’t want the life I offered him any more? So when I approached him I was prepared for him to bolt again and run off. But he didn’t.

105I’d barely whispered softly, ‘Hey Bob, it’s me’, before he jumped straight into my arms.

106All my fears about him wanting rid of me evaporated as he purred deeply and rubbed himself against me.

107‘You gave me such a scare there, mate,’ I said, stroking him. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

108I looked up and saw that the two shopkeepers were standing nearby watching.

109One of them was dabbing her eyes, close to tears.

110‘I’m so glad you found him,’ she said. ‘He looked like such a lovely cat. We were wondering what we’d do with him if no one showed up before closing time.’ She came closer and stroked Bob for a moment as well. We then chatted for a couple of minutes as she and her colleague got ready to close the till and started preparing to shut up shop for the evening.

111‘Bye, Bob,’ the pair said as we headed off back into the throng around Piccadilly Circus with Bob perched on my shoulder again.

112When I got back to Ripley’s I discovered—to my mild amazement—that my guitar was still there. Maybe the security guy at the door had kept an eye on it. Or perhaps one of the community support officers in the area had made sure it was safe. At the time there was a mobile police unit next to us. All the police and community support people loved Bob. He had become very popular with the police.

113I had no idea who the Good Samaritan was but to be honest I didn’t care. I was just glad that Bob and I were reunited.

114I wasted no time in gathering up my stuff and calling it a night. We’d not made enough money but that wasn’t my biggest concern. I stopped at a general store and, with most of the cash I had on me, bought myself a little belt clip that I attached, first to me then to his lead. It would make sure that we remained connected all the time. On the bus rather than sitting on the seat next to me as usual, he sat on my lap. He could be an inscrutable chap but at other times I knew exactly what Bob was thinking. Tonight was one of those occasions. We were together, and neither of us wanted that to change.