The World's Most Famous Busker's Cat (An Interview I Did Earlier This Year)

It’s early afternoon on a sunny spring Saturday in London, and Covent Garden’s Neal Street is bustling with the usual mixture of tourists and hipsters. Amidst a crowd of fifty or sixty of them, a busker sings Molly’s Lips, a song written by the Scottish band The Vaselines and made famous by his favourite band, Nirvana. His look is pretty archetypal for his trade: long black coat, jeans, beard, floppy, collar-brushing hair. What makes him unusual is that in front of him sits a medium-sized ginger cat, in a scarf. As people mill around him, taking photographs, the cat sits perfectly still, like a small ginger Buddha, barely flinching even when a huge four by four passes along the street within a few feet of his nose. 

“As far as I know, I’m the only person who does this in the UK,” James Bowen tells me, leaning down to stroke the head of Bob, the ginger moggy who accompanies him everywhere he goes. “I heard about a guy in New York who walks around with a cat on his head, but not here. Lots of dogs and some ferrets, but no cats. I wouldn’t actually recommend it. I think Bob’s a one off.”

It was almost five years ago that James, a former heroin addict, met Bob, a poorly stray who hung around the assisted housing where he lived in Tottenham. Having nursed him back to health, he not only realised that Bob wanted to stay by his side, but that he was perfectly happy to ride around on his shoulders and sit patiently with him while he busked. At first, Bob would trot into town alongside James unshackled, but, following a hairy incident when Bob got frightened by a man in an inflatable suit on Piccadilly Circus and ran away, he introduced a harness. “Some people have told me I’m cruel to keep him on a lead,” says James, “but if a cat is unhappy on a lead, it’s obvious. And Bob is happy with it.” In agreement, Bob gazes beatifically up at him, before – and I really have to pinch myself as I watch this - giving him a high five with his paw.

 Soon, James and Bob became London celebrities, whose fans would bring Bob daily treats and clothing (“his wardrobe is much bigger than mine,” says James). As an author of two books about cats, I remember my readers sending me photos of the pair of them as far back as 2008. Now their adventures have been recorded by James in A Street Cat Named Bob: an instantly bestselling memoir that, beside its heartwarming tale of their friendship, offers an insight into the injustice of life on the streets that’s by turns frustrating and life-affirming. “My life really can be divided into two periods: Before Bob, and After Bob,” says James. “I feel blessed every day to know this cat. Some people have asked me if they can buy him, and I always reply with the same question: ‘Would you sell me your firstborn child?’.”

  A Street Cat Named Bob
  Under The Paw
  Talk To The Tail

This Cat Food Will Bankrupt Me

It's now over a month since my cat Janet died. In that time, there have been three main developments for my remaining felines, Ralph, Shipley and The Bear. Shipley has gone from calling me a "f*&$%%£%£ &@****^£" 48 times a day to calling me one 76 times a day. A mangy stray has been coming around, talking trash at the three of them, and pissing on my blackboard while I'm asleep. Thirdly, all four of them - I'm including the stray here, as it seems to turn up whenever it's feeding time - have become addicted to Applaws (also known as Encore in some supermarkets), a cat food apparently so similar to human food that, when I first saw it, whilst writing a piece on the 1997 Supreme Cat Show for the Daily Telegraph, its chef demonstrated how good it was by eating some himself.

The problem is perhaps that these new occurrences in my cats' daily lives are feeding off one another, inexorably. When Shipley swears, I feel bad that he has lost his old fluffy playmate, and give him more Applaws. When I give him more Applaws, he swears more, because he knows it gets him more Applaws. When I give him more Applaws, the stray cat turns up, thinking it might get some Applaws, then pissing on my blackboard, talking its street slang at my cats and passing on its conjunctivitis to them out of dissatisfaction. When the stray cat pisses on my blackboard, talks its street slang at my cats and passes on its conjunctivitis to them, I feed them more Applaws, to make them feel better. It's a vicious circle, and I can only see it ending one way: with me selling my body in one of Norwich's less salubrious night spots, in order for all five of us to carry on like this. It sounds grim, sure, but it's important to put things in perspective: everyone's struggling in the current economic climate, and needs must. Besides, I once had to do a pole dancing class for an article in a women's magazine, and it's about time I put what I learned to good use.

I suppose the other option is that I try a bit of tough love: ration The Bear, Shipley and Ralph to two or three tins of Applaws between them a day. But it's easier said than done. If I ignore Shipley calling me a "w*** p***et" at the top of his voice, I then also have to ignore Ralph doing that beaming "I'm so pleased to be me - revel in my glory, now!" face on the other side of the kitchen, and The Bear nodding in the direction of the food cupboard whilst looking soulfully into my eyes in the way only he can. I currently have a large puncture wound in my ankle, merely from delaying breakfast until 10am this morning. But if Shipley can do that to a digit, why can't he keep the stray away? I like to think it's because he's still adjusting to a reshifting of roles since Janet - always the defender of the realm against alien cats - passed away, or that he's worried about what he might catch from the stray in a potential battle, but recent evidence suggests otherwise. The stray turned up last night, and, as Shipley stayed inside, presumably because he needed to sort out his side-parting, I got a first proper glimpse of the phantom beast which I'd imagined as huge, and peppered with festering body sores, and which, in the past, I'd only seen as a flash of retreating ginger. It was the size of a small cushion, and looked like it had just got back from a weekend away at a high class spa overseen by a gay ferret.

Stray Dave Chows Down On His Spoils

Thanks to Lenise for taking these pics of the Under The Paw Hardest-Looking Cat Comp Winner enjoying his prize at the Lewisham branch of CHAT.