A Street Cat Named Bob

The nurse on duty recognised him immediately and looked concerned when I told her Bob had been under the weather.

‘Let’s give him a quick check up, shall we?’ she said.

She checked his weight and inside his mouth and had a good feel around his body.

‘All seems well,’ she said. ‘I think he’s on the road to recovery.’

We chatted for a couple of minutes before I headed off.

‘Just don’t go rummaging in those bins any more, Bob,’ the nurse said as we left the makeshift surgery.

Seeing Bob sick had a profound effect on me. He had seemed to be such an indestructible cat. I’d never imagined him getting ill. Discovering that he was mortal really shook me.

It underlined the feeling that had been building inside me for a while now. It was time for me to get myself clean.

I was fed up with my lifestyle. I was tired of the mind-numbing routing of having to go to the DDU unit every fortnight and the chemist every day. I was tired of feeling like I could slip back into addiction at any time.

So the next time I went to see my counsellor I asked him about coming off methadone and taking the final step towards becoming completely clean. We’d talked about it before, but I don’t think he’d ever really taken me at my word. Today, he could tell I was serious.

‘Won’t be easy, James,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I know that.’

‘You’ll need to take a drug called Subutex. We can then slowly decrease the dosage of that so that you don’t need to take anything,’ he said.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘The transition can be hard, you can have quite severe withdrawal symptoms,’ he said, leaning forward.

‘That’s my problem,’ I said. ‘But I want to do it. I want to do it for myself and for Bob.’

‘OK, well, I will get things moving and we will look at beginning the process in a few weeks’ time.’

For the first time in years, I felt like I could see the tiniest light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

Chapter 15 The Naughty List

I could sense there was something wrong the moment I arrived at the Covent Garden coordinators’ stand one damp, cold Monday morning. A few other vendors were hanging around, stamping their feet to keep warm and sipping at Styrofoam cups of tea. When they noticed me and Bob, a couple of them muttered to each other and threw me dirty looks, as if I was an unwelcome guest.

When Sam, the coordinator appeared from the other side of the distribution trolley where she’d been collecting a new batch of papers, she immediately jabbed a finger at me.

‘James, I need to have a word with you,’ she said, looking stern.

‘Sure, what’s the problem?’ I said, approaching her with Bob on my shoulder.

She almost always said hello to him and gave him a stroke, but not today.

‘I’ve had a complaint. In fact, I’ve had a couple of complaints.’

‘What about?’ I said.

‘A couple of vendors are saying that you are floating. You’ve been spotted doing it a few times around Covent Garden. You know floating is against the rules.’

‘It’s not true,’ I said, but she just put her palm up in classic ‘talk to the hand’ fashion.

‘There’s no point arguing about it. The office wants you to go in for a talk.’

I assumed that was that and headed towards the stacks of papers that had just arrived.

‘Sorry, no, you can’t buy any more magazines until you go into Vauxhall and sort it out.’

‘What? I can’t get any more magazines today?’ I protested. ‘How am I going to make any money for Bob and me?’

‘Sorry, but you are suspended until you sort it out with head office.’

I was upset, but not entirely surprised. Things had been building up to this for a while.

One of the many rules that you have to follow as a Big Issue seller is that you stick to selling your papers at your designated spot. You aren’t supposed to sell at someone else’s pitch. And you aren’t supposed to ‘float’, that is, to sell while you are walking around the streets. I was 100 per cent in agreement with the rule. I wouldn’t have liked it if someone started walking around next to my pitch waving Big Issues around. It was the fairest and simplest way of policing London’s army of vendors.

But during the past month or two I’d had a couple of vendors come up to me to complain that I was ‘floating’. They reckoned they’d seen me selling papers while I was walking around with Bob. It wasn’t true, but I could see why they might have thought it.

Walking around with Bob had always been a stop-start process. Wherever we went around London, we were stopped every few yards by people wanting to stroke him and talk to him or have a photograph taken.

The only difference now was that people would sometimes ask to buy a copy of the Big Issue as well.

As I explained to the other vendors, it put me in a really tricky spot. What I should technically say was, ‘Sorry, you’ll have to come to my pitch or buy one from the nearest vendor.’ But I knew what the end result of that would be: no sale, which wouldn’t benefit anyone.

A few of the vendors I’d spoken to had sympathised and understood. Quite a few others didn’t, however.