A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t much chance of rain. What sort of crowd would there be in Covent Garden? Well, it was getting close to Easter so there were a lot of tourists. How long would it take me to make the twenty or thirty pounds I needed to get me - and now Bob - through the next few days? Well, it had taken me the best part of five hours the previous day. Maybe it would be better today, maybe it wouldn’t. That was the thing with busking; you just never knew.
    I was mulling all these things over still when I was suddenly aware of something.
    Ordinarily, no one would engage or even exchange a look with me. I was a busker and this was London. I didn’t exist. I was a person to be avoided, shunned even. But as I walked down Neal Street that afternoon almost every person we passed was looking at me. Well, more to the point, they were looking at Bob.
    One or two had quizzical, slightly confused looks on their faces, which was understandable, I guess. It must have looked slightly incongruous, a tall, long-haired bloke walking along with a large, ginger tom on his shoulders. Not something you see every day - even on the streets of London.
    Most people, however, were reacting more warmly. The moment they saw Bob their faces would break into broad smiles. It wasn’t long before people were stopping us.
    ‘Ah, look at you two,’ said one well-dressed, middle-aged lady laden down with shopping bags. ‘He’s gorgeous. Can I stroke him?’
    ‘Of course,’ I said, thinking it would be a one-off event.
    She plonked down her bags and placed her face right up to his.
    ‘What a lovely fellow you are, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘He is a boy, isn’t he?’
    ‘He is,’ I said.
    ‘Isn’t he good to sit there on your shoulders like that? Don’t see that very often. He must really trust you.’
    I’d barely said goodbye to the lady when we were approached by two young girls. They’d seen the lady making a fuss of Bob so I guess they thought they could do the same. They turned out to be Swedish teenagers on holiday.
    ‘What is his name? Can we take his picture?’ they said, snapping away with their cameras the instant I nodded.
    ‘His name’s Bob,’ I said.
    ‘Ah, Bob. Cool.’
    We chatted for a minute or two. One of them had a cat herself and produced a picture of it for me. I had to politely excuse myself after a couple of minutes, otherwise they would have spent hours drooling over him.
    We carried on towards the bottom of Neal Street in the direction of Long Acre. But the going was slow. No sooner had the latest admirer gone away than the same thing was happening again - and again. I’d barely go three feet without being stopped by someone who wanted to stroke or talk to Bob.
    The novelty soon wore off. At this rate I wasn’t going to get anywhere, I began to realise. It normally took me not much more than ten minutes to get from my normal bus stop to my pitch at Covent Garden. But it had already taken me twice that because everyone had seemed to want to stop and talk to Bob. It was a bit ridiculous.
    By the time we got to Covent Garden it was almost an hour after I normally got set up.
    Thanks a lot, Bob, you’ve probably cost me a few quid in lost earnings , I heard myself saying in my head, half-jokingly.
    It was a serious issue though. If he was going to slow me down this much every day, I really couldn’t let him follow me on to the bus again, I thought. It wasn’t long before I was thinking a bit differently.
     
    By this point, I’d been busking around Covent Garden for about a year and a half. I generally started at about two or three in the afternoon and carried on until around eight in the evening. It was the best time to capture tourists and people finishing off their shopping or on the way home from work. At the weekends I would go earlier and do lunchtimes. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday I’d carry on until quite late, trying to take advantage of the extra numbers of Londoners that hung around at the end of the