A Street Cat Named Bob

It had been hammering down with rain for about four hours and barely a person had slowed down to stop and buy a magazine. I couldn’t blame them. They just wanted to get out of the deluge.

Since we’d started selling early in the afternoon, the only people who had shown an interest in me and Bob had been the security staff of the various buildings where we’d stopped to try and take shelter.

‘Sorry, mate, you can’t stay here,’ they’d said to me with monotonous regularity.

I’d found the umbrella discarded in a bin and had decided to use it in one last attempt to avert another mini-disaster of a day. It wasn’t working.

I had been managing to get hold of papers from various vendors around London for about a month now. I had been careful about who I approached and wherever I could I got other vendors to buy papers for me. A lot of people knew who I was. But there were enough who didn’t know I was on the suspended list who picked up batches of ten or twenty papers for me, to get me by. I didn’t want to get them into trouble, but if they didn’t know I was banned then no one could criticise them. I figured it was safe and after everything I had been through over the past few months, I just wanted to make a living and take care of myself and Bob.

It hadn’t been going well though. Finding the right pitch was a real problem, mainly because most of the places I’d set up shop weren’t actually licensed. Bob and I had been moved on from various street corners around Oxford Street, Paddington, King’s Cross, Euston and other stations. One day, after being asked to move on three times by the same policeman, I got a semi-official warning that next time I’d be arrested. I didn’t want to go through that again.

It was a real catch-22 situation. I’d made sure to steer clear of the main pitches and tried to pick places that were a bit off the beaten track. But as a result I’d found it really hard to sell the magazine, even with Bob. The Big Issue hadn’t designated its prime sales spots by accident. They knew exactly where papers would sell - and where they wouldn’t. These were the spots I’d found myself occupying.

People were still drawn to Bob, of course, but the locations just weren’t right. Inevitably, this had hit me in the pocket, and it had become much harder for me to manage the business side of the Big Issue. Tonight I was going to hit rock bottom in that respect. I had about fifteen papers left. I knew I wasn’t going to sell them and by Monday they would be out of date when a new edition came out. I was in trouble.

As the light faded and the rain continued to fall, I told myself that I’d try a couple more pitches in the hope of shifting these papers. I hadn’t figured on Bob, though.

Until now he’d been as good as gold, a real stoic even on the most desperately grim day. He’d even put up with the regular splashings he got from passing cars and people, even though I knew he hated getting soaked in the cold. But when I tried to stop and sit down at the first street corner I’d spotted, he refused to stop walking. It was extremely rare that he pulled on the lead like a dog, but that’s exactly what he was doing now.

‘OK, Bob, I get the message, you don’t want to stop there,’ I said, simply thinking that he didn’t fancy that particular location. But when he did exactly the same thing at the next spot and then again at the next spot after that, the penny finally dropped.

‘You want to go home, don’t you, Bob?’ I said. He was still walking along on the lead, but on hearing this he slowed down and tilted his head almost imperceptibly in my direction, giving me what for all the world looked like a raised eyebrow. He then stopped and gave me the familiar look that said he wanted to be picked up.

In that instant I made the decision. Until now, Bob had been a rock, sticking loyally by my side despite the fact that business hadn’t been so good and his bowl had consequently been a little less full of food. It just underlined to me how loyal he was. Now I had to be loyal to him and get us back on track with the Big Issue management.

I knew it was the right thing to do. The Big Issue had been a great step forward for me. It had given me the biggest boost I’d had for a long time, well, since Bob had come into my life, in fact. I just needed to clear up the situation with them. I couldn’t avoid facing the music any longer. For Bob’s sake as much as mine. I couldn’t keep doing this to him.

And so it was that the following Monday morning I had a good wash and put on a decent shirt and set off for Vauxhall. I took Bob with me, to help explain the case.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I got there. The worst-case scenario, obviously, would be that I’d be stripped of my badge and banned from selling the magazine. That would have been grossly unfair. But I knew there would have to be some kind of punishment if they found me guilty of ‘floating’. My best hope was to convince them that I hadn’t been doing that.