The World According to Bob

It was rare I got visitors at the flat. I didn’t have many friends locally and kept to myself within the building. I would pass the time of day with neighbours but I could count the number of times any of them had popped round for a chat on the fingers of one hand. So I was always wary whenever someone knocked on the door or pressed the building’s intercom at the entrance downstairs. I automatically assumed the worst, expecting to find myself confronted by a bailiff or a debt collector chasing me for money that I didn’t have.

That was my immediate reaction when the intercom buzzer went just after 9am one weekday morning as Bob and I got ready for work.

‘Who the heck is that?’ I said, instinctively twitching at the curtains even though I had no view of the entrance from up on the fifth floor.

‘James, it’s Titch. Can I come up with Princess?’ a familiar voice said over the speaker.

‘Ah. Titch. Sure, head on up, I’ll put the kettle on,’ I said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Titch was, as his name suggested, a tiny little bloke. He was wiry and had short, thinning hair. Like me, he was a recovering addict who had started selling The Big Issue. He had been having a hard time and had crashed out at my place a couple of times in recent months. He’d got into trouble with work after becoming a co-ordinator in Islington. He had been ‘de-badged’ and given a six month suspension. He was still waiting for his ban to be lifted and had been really struggling to make ends meet.

I felt like I’d been given a second chance in life since I’d met Bob so had given Titch another opportunity as well. I also quite liked him. Deep down, I knew, he had a good heart.

Another reason that Titch and I got on was that we both worked on the street with our pet as our companion. In Titch’s case it was his faithful black Labrador-Staffordshire Bull Terrier-cross, Princess. She was a lovely, sweet-natured dog. When he’d stayed with me previously, he’d left Princess somewhere else. He knew that I had Bob and that having a dog in the house might cause problems for me. But, for some reason, that wasn’t the case today. I braced myself for what might happen when the pair of them arrived at the front door.

Bob’s ears pricked up at the sound of knocking. When he saw Titch and Princess walking in, his first reaction was to arch his back and hiss. Cats arch their backs to make themselves look bigger in a fight, apparently. This is why they also get their hair to stand on end. In this particular case, however, Bob needn’t have bothered. Princess was a really easy-going and affectionate dog. She could also be a little nervous. So the moment she saw Bob in full, confrontational mode she just froze to the spot. It was a complete reversal of the normal roles, where the physically bigger dog intimidates the smaller cat.

‘It’s all right, Princess,’ I said. ‘He won’t hurt you.’

I then led her into my bedroom and shut the door so that she felt safe.

‘James, mate. Is there any way you can look after Princess for the day?’ Titch said, cutting straight to the chase when I handed him a mug of tea. ‘I’ve got to go and sort out my social security situation.’

‘Sure,’ I said, knowing how long those sorts of things could take. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Should it Bob?’

He gave me an enigmatic look.

‘We are working at Angel today. She’ll be all right with us there won’t she?’ I said.

‘Yeah, no problem,’ Titch said. ‘So how about if I pick her up there this evening at about 6pm?’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Right, better dash. Got to be in the front of the queue if I want to be seen this side of Christmas,’ Titch said, popping his head into my bedroom.

‘Be a good girl, Princess,’ he said, before heading off.

As he’d demonstrated again already this morning, Bob didn’t have a major problem with dogs unless they were aggressive towards him. Even then, he could handle himself pretty well and had seen off a few scary looking mongrels with a growl and a loud hiss. Back during our early days busking around Covent Garden, I’d even seen him give one over-aggressive dog a bop on the nose with his paw.

Bob wasn’t just territorial with dogs. He wasn’t a huge fan of other cats, either. There were times when I wondered whether he didn’t actually know he was a cat. He seemed to look at them as if they were inferior beings, unfit to breathe the same air as him. Our route to and from work had become more complicated in recent months thanks to the cancellation of a bus service that used to take us straight from Tottenham High Road to Angel. So we’d started taking different buses, one of which required us to change in Newington Green, a mile or so from Angel. When money was tight, we’d walk to Angel. As we did so, Bob would sniff and stare whenever we went past what was clearly a cat house.

If he ever saw another cat out and about he would let them know in no uncertain terms that this was his turf.