The World According to Bob

‘Yes, I know. I’m off,’ I said.

The incident had really riled me. I became convinced that this lady was the one who had reported me to the RSPCA. Now that tactic seemed to have failed, she had changed tack. She would go to any lengths to drive us away, it seemed.

Back at the flat that evening, the RSPCA inspector rang me on my mobile and said that I had absolutely nothing to worry about.

‘He’s a special creature, and you’re doing a grand job,’ the lady said. ‘My advice to you is to ignore those who tell you any different.’ It was the wisest advice I’d had for a long time. And, unusually for me, I took it.

Chapter 16. Doctor Bob

I was finding it harder and harder to haul myself out of bed in the morning. For the past few weeks I’d actually grown to dread the sight of the late winter sun, leaking light through my bedroom window.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get up. I wasn’t sleeping well and was usually awake by first light in any case. My reasons for wanting to hide, motionless under the duvet, were very different. I knew that the moment I got up, I would just start coughing again.

I’d suffered from chest problems for some time, but recently they had begun to get really bad. I reasoned it was because I was always on the streets, working outside. But now, no sooner had I got up in the morning, than my lungs and chest were filling up with phlegm and I was coughing really violently almost constantly. At times it was so bad that I was doubling up in pain and I would begin retching and vomiting. It really wasn’t pleasant for me — or anyone else, to be honest. The sounds I was making were pretty horrendous. I was embarrassed to be in public places.

I was getting really worried about it. I’d been smoking since I was a 13-year-old back in Australia and had inhaled a lot more than just plain cigarettes over the years. Also, an ex-girlfriend from way back had died of tuberculosis after smoking a lot of drugs a few years earlier. The memory of her coughing uncontrollably in her final months had remained with me. I’d heard somewhere that TB was actually contagious. Had I contracted it from her? Were my lungs collapsing? Try as I might, I couldn’t stop all sorts of crazy thoughts whizzing around in my head.

I had tried to get rid of the coughing by dosing myself with cheap medicines from the supermarket. But it had gotten me nowhere. I’d seen a doctor, but at that stage it could easily have been a seasonal cold and he’d fobbed me off with a suggestion that I should take a few paracetamol, rest and cut down on smoking. That hadn’t achieved much at all.

Bob had again sensed I was unwell and started paying me attention. He would wrap himself around me as if taking some kind of measurements. I’d learned the lessons of the past and didn’t dismiss him this time.

‘Here comes Doctor Bob,’ I joked one day.

There was no question in my mind that he was performing some kind of diagnosis. When I was lying on the sofa or on the bed, he would often spread himself out on my chest, purring gently.

I’d read about cats having the power to heal bones with their purring. Apparently there’s something about the frequency at which they vibrate that somehow strengthens bones. I wondered whether he was trying to somehow heal my chest. More worryingly, I wondered whether he knew something I didn’t?

In a way, that was the scariest thing of all. I knew how intuitive cats are when it comes to sniffing out illness in humans. There’s evidence that they can predict epileptic fits, seizures and other illnesses. One cat I read about, from Yorkshire, would give its male owner ‘strange looks’ before he was about to have a fit. Famously, there was a cat called Oscar who lived in an old people’s home in America and would come and sit with residents who were in their final hours. No one was quite sure whether he was picking up on something visual or whether he was able to tune into the smells produced by the bio-chemical changes in a person’s body when they die. What was in no doubt, however, was the fact that Oscar’s ability to anticipate people’s passing was uncanny, so much so that people dreaded seeing him sidling up to them. It was as if the cat was some kind of Angel of Death. I did hope Bob wasn’t the same.

After a while I made another appointment, this time with a young doctor that a friend had recommended as being very good. He certainly seemed a little more sympathetic. I told him about the coughing and the vomiting.

‘I’d better take a listen to your lungs,’ he said. After checking me out with a stethoscope he made me do a peak-flow check, testing the strength of my breathing and chest. I’d had childhood asthma so I knew my chest wasn’t the strongest.

He didn’t say too much. He just sat there making notes, rather too many of them for my liking.

‘OK, Mr Bowen, I’d like you to have a chest X-ray,’ he said, eventually.

‘Oh, OK,’ I said, worried already.

He then printed out a form which he handed to me.