Recovering drug addict James Bowen’s life was at a low ebb in the spring of 2007. Onmethadone as part of a programme to wean him off heroin, he was barely scraping anexistence busking in London’s Covent Garden, when he returned to his shelteredaccommodation in Tottenham one evening to find a ginger tom on the doorstep.

The thin mangy seemed as lonely and hopeless as James, who took pity on the animaland began feeding him. After a local search failed to yield an owner, James took thestray in, an arrangement that filled as much a need in him as in the cat, whom hechristened Bob.

 After a childhood made difficult by his parents’ divorce and much moving around,including emigration from England to Australia, James had come to London where heplayed in a rock band and then drifted into a life of drug dependency fuelled by pettycrime. What Bob offered James was the opportunity to care for another creature, aresponsibility he had never known.

With his limited funds, James slowly and lovingly nursed Bob back to health. He duginto his meager income to feed Bob and they settled into a companionable existencewhose only inconvenience was Bob’s refusal to use a litter tray and insistence on beingwalked down the five flights of stairs from the flat to go out to the garden.

James’s routine was to put Bob out for the day before setting off on the bus into town tosing and play his guitar for tourists in Covent Garden.

But then Bob started following him and it became increasingly difficult to shoo him away,especially as there were dangerous roads to be crossed. One day there was nothing for it but to put Bob on a makeshift lead and take him along. Bob travelled sitting onJames’s shoulders. 

The trouble was, so many cat-mad passers-by stopped him to stroke the animal thatJames arrived late at his pitch, secretly cursing Bob for thereby costing him some of hisusual £25-a-day takings. He couldn’t have been more wrong.  

Within minutes, people who would normally have walked by without giving James asecond glance were lingering to make a fuss of the cat sitting sedately in his guitar case,and most made a donation. By the end of the day, he’d racked up more than £60.  

It was the beginning of a phenomenon as tourists and commuters befriended Bob andJames, many bringing tidbits for the cat. People were amazed at how placidly Bobwould sit all day, quite happily watching the world go by while James earned a living.Not that it was always without a hitch; on a couple of occasions Bob bolted whenstartled, leading to a frantic chase through the crowded streets.

Bob’s popularity continued when James switched from busking to selling the Big Issue,the magazine produced and sold by homeless people. This change in direction was partof James’s growing sense of a need to get his life in order, which he puts down to theresponsibility of looking after Bob, and the example the cat offered of the possibility of asecond chance.

It enabled James to make the final push to end his drug dependency, going through thenecessary cold turkey to get off heroin substitutes, and to repair broken contacts withhis family. The final result of Bob’s influence came when a literary agent who passedthe duo every day and had seen them on YouTube suggested James tell their story in abook. The result is this heart-warming tale with a message of hope that will appealespecially to the many cat obsessives out there.