The World According to Bob

I’d found Bob walking around with a miniature container of butter attached to one of his paws. He loved butter so had obviously found this and been dipping his paw in so that he could lick it clean. He’d somehow wedged the paw inside the container and was now walking around with it attached. Every now and again, he’d raise his paw and tap it against a cupboard door in an effort to dislodge it. Eventually I’d had to help him remove it. I could see I would have to do the same thing here.

He was clearly feeling a little bit sorry for himself and knew he’d done something stupid.

‘Bob, you silly boy. What have you done to yourself?’ I said, leaning down to help him. Thank goodness he hadn’t shoved his head all the way inside the tin, I thought. It had a serrated edge where it had been opened so I was careful in removing it from his head. I smelled inside the tin. It wasn’t the most pleasant odour I’d ever encountered, that was for sure.

The instant I extricated the top of his head from the tin, Bob scooted off into the corner. There were bits of food stuck to his ear and the back of his head so he began licking and washing himself frantically. As he did so he kept shooting me rather sheepish looks, as if to say: ‘yes, I know it was a dumb thing to do. Don’t tell me you’ve never done anything stupid yourself.’

As we headed off into work an hour or so later, he was still wearing the same, rather embarrassed expression and I was still smiling to myself about it.

The first sign that something was amiss came a few days later when he began eating more than usual. Bob’s daily diet had been a well-established routine for a long time now. Even though money was tight, I always tried to feed him decent ‘Scientific Formula’ food from the most popular cat food brands. I’d ration it carefully, following the recommended portions. So in the morning he had a flat tea cup full of high-nutrition biscuits and at the end of the day, about an hour before his bed time, he’d then have a further half a tea cup of biscuits along with half a pouch of meat as his evening meal.

These two meals would be supplemented by the little snacks he had while we were out working. It was always more than sufficient to keep him happy and healthy. In fact, he normally left a quarter or so of his morning biscuits because it was too much for him. Sometimes he’d leave it there, at other times he’d eat it just before we headed out to work, as a mid-morning snack.

A few days after he’d got his head caught in the tin can, however, I noticed that he was wolfing down all his breakfast in double-quick time. He was even licking the bowl clean.

He was also more demanding. I had always decided when to give him a reward for his tricks. But now he began to ask for snacks himself. There was something different about the way he pleaded for these snacks as well. It wasn’t the usual plaintive, ’Puss in Boots’ look. It was as if he was really desperate for food. And it was the same when we got home. Ordinarily, he was pretty laid back about getting his dinner, but he began to hassle me as soon as we were in the door. He would be quite agitated until I filled his bowl up. Again, he’d shovel everything down him as fast as possible and give me a look straight out of Oliver Twist. ‘Please, dad, can I have some more?’

The alarming thing, however, was that after a week or so of this behaviour he wasn’t gaining any weight.

That’s odd, I said to myself one evening when he’d finished his dinner and still looked like he could have eaten more.

Adding to my suspicions that something was wrong was the fact that he was going to the toilet more often. Bob was, like most cats, a creature of habit when it came to toilet time. Over the years he’d overcome his dislike of going in the litter tray at home and did his business there in the mornings. He’d then go again when we were out in London. Suddenly, however, this habit had changed and he had started going three times or more each day. He might have been going more than that, as far as I knew. I’d caught him using the toilet in the flat once. I hadn’t seen him use it again since then, for some reason. Maybe he didn’t like me watching him? But as I began to worry more and more about this change in his habits I noticed the water in the toilet bowl was a little off colour sometimes.

He had also started demanding to be taken to the toilet more often at Angel. It was always a real palaver, packing up and heading over to the Green so that he could get on with things, but it had to be done.

‘What is wrong with you, Bob?’ I said, losing patience with him after a few days of this. He just gave me an aloof look, as if to tell me to mind my own business.

The moment I knew I had a real problem, however, was when I found him dragging his bottom along the floor. The first time I noticed it was one morning soon after I’d woken up. I saw him deep in concentration, scooting his undercarriage on the carpet in the living room.

I wasn’t best pleased.