The World According to Bob Read Free

movies, he stands there on the mattress staring at me wide-eyed with his piercing green eyes. It is heartbreakingly cute – and totally irresistible. It always makes me smile. And it always works.
    I always keep a packet of his favourite snacks in a drawer by the side of the bed. Depending on how I am feeling, I might let him come up on the bed for a cuddle and a couple of treats or, if I am in a more playful mood, I’ll throw them on to the carpet for him to chase around. I often spend the first few minutes of the day lobbing mini treats around, watching him hunt them down. Cats are amazingly agile creatures and Bob often intercepts them in mid-flight, like a cricketer or baseball player fielding a ball in the outfield. He leaps up and catches them in his paws. He has even caught them in his mouth a couple of times. It is quite a spectacle.
    On other occasions, if I am tired or not in the mood for playing, he’ll entertain himself.
    One summer’s morning, for instance, I was lying on my bed watching breakfast television. It was shaping up to be a really warm day and it was especially hot up on the fifth floor of our tower block. Bob was curled up in a shady spot in the bedroom, seemingly fast asleep. Or so I’d assumed.
    Suddenly he sat up, jumped on the bed and, almost using it as a trampoline, threw himself at the wall behind me, hitting it quite hard with his paws.
    ‘Bob, what the hell?’ I said, gobsmacked. I looked at the duvet and saw a little millipede lying there. Bob was eyeing it and was clearly ready to crunch it in his mouth.
    ‘Oh, no you don’t mate,’ I said, knowing that insects can be poisonous to cats. ‘You don’t know where that’s been.’
    He shot me a look as if to say ‘spoilsport’.
    I have always been amazed at Bob’s speed, strength and athleticism. Someone suggested to me once that he must be related to a Maine Coon or a lynx or some kind of wild cat. It is entirely possible. Bob’s past is a complete mystery to me. I don’t know how old he is and know nothing about the life he led before I found him. Unless I did a DNA test on him, I’ll never know where he comes from or who his parents were. To be honest though, I don’t really care. Bob is Bob. And that is all I need to know.

    I wasn’t the only one who had learned to love Bob for being his colourful, unpredictable self.
    It was the spring of 2009 and by now Bob and I had been selling The Big Issue for a year or so. Initially we’d had a pitch outside Covent Garden tube station in central London. But we’d moved to Angel, Islington where we’d carved out a little niche for ourselves and Bob had built up a small, but dedicated band of admirers.
    As far as I was aware, we were the only human/feline team selling The Big Issue in London. And even if there was another one, I suspected the feline part of the partnership wasn’t much competition for Bob when it came to drawing – and pleasing – a crowd.
    During our early days together, when I had been a busker playing the guitar and singing, he had sat there, Buddha-like, watching the world going about its business. People were fascinated – and I think a bit mesmerised – by him and would stop, stroke and talk to him. Often they’d ask our story and I’d tell them all about how we’d met and formed our partnership. But that was about the extent of it.
    Since we’d been selling The Big Issue , however, he’d become a lot more active. I often sat down on the pavement to play with him and we’d developed a few tricks.
    It had begun with Bob entertaining people on his own. He loved to play, so I’d bring along little toys that he would toss around and chase. His favourite was a little grey mouse that had once been filled with catnip.
    The mouse had ceased to have any trace of catnip a long time ago and was now a battered, bedraggled and rather pathetic looking thing. Its stitching had begun to come apart and, although it had always been grey, it had now become a