The World According to Bob

profound level, our story also seemed to connect with people who were facing difficult times in their lives. Hundreds of them wrote to me or contacted us via social media. Some read our story of survival and drew their own strength from it. Others recognised the power animals possess to heal us humans. Again, I was immensely proud every time I received a message of this kind. I never in a million years expected that I’d touch the life of one person, let alone thousands.
    A few people got a little carried away and bestowed some kind of divinity on Bob and me. Bob might have been a saint but I wasn’t, that was for sure. You can’t spend a decade fighting for your day-to-day existence on the streets of London without being shaped by that environment. You can’t live a chunk of your life dependent on heroin without being damaged by that experience. I was a product of my past.
    So I knew it would take me a long time to iron out the rougher edges of my personality. And I would never quite shake off my past, not least because people would always pop up to remind me of my lost years. Medically, I still carried the scars of my drug-addicted twenties too. The punishment I inflicted on my body would continue to extract a price. In short, Saint James of Tottenham didn’t exist. He never had and he never would. The person who most definitely did exist, however, was someone who had been given his second chance in life and who was determined to seize it. And if I ever lost sight of that, I now had constant reminders of why that second chance was so important.
    I recently received a letter from a lady in a small, rural community in Wales whose close friend had just lost her long fight against cancer. The lady had given our book to her friend during her final days. She had been so touched by it that she had, in turn, given a copy to her local Minister. During his oration at the friend’s funeral in the small village chapel, the Minister had held up a copy of our book in front of the congregation. He mentioned how much the book had meant to the lady at the end of her life and praised our ‘wonderful journey of hope’. Bob and I were, he said, an example of the power of ‘faith, hope and love’. Reading this moved me to floods of tears. It was unbelievably humbling. It remained in my head for days.
    For far too many years those three precious qualities – faith, hope and love – had been sorely missing in my life. But then a twist of fate delivered me all three. They were each embodied in the mischievous, playful, canny, occasionally cantankerous but always devoted cat who helped me turn my life around.
    Bob had helped me restore my faith in myself and the world around me. He had shown me hope when I really couldn’t see much of it. Most of all he had given me the unconditional love each of us needs.
    During one of my television appearances on the BBC, a presenter asked me a question which threw me at first.
    ‘What will you do when Bob is not around any more?’ he asked.
    I got a little emotional at the very thought of losing him, but once I’d gathered myself, I answered as honestly as I could. I said I knew that animals didn’t live as long as us humans, but that I would cherish every single day that I shared with him. And when the time came for him to leave, he would live on in the books that he inspired.
    They may have been the truest words I ever uttered.
    The world as it was before I met Bob seemed a harsh, heartless and, yes, a hopeless place. The world I have grown to see through his eyes is a very different one. There was a time when I couldn’t distinguish one day from the next. Now I cherish each one. I am happier, healthier and more fulfilled than I have ever been. For now, at least, I have escaped from life on the streets. I can see a clear path ahead of me.
    I have no idea where our adventure will lead us next. But I know that, for as long as he is around, Bob will be at the heart of all the good things that come to pass. He is my companion, my best friend, my teacher and my soul mate. And he will remain all of those things. Always.
     

Acknowledgements
     
     
     
     
     
    Writing this book has been a collaborative process and I need to thank the team of incredibly talented and supportive people who helped me cross the finishing line. Garry Jenkins was my principle guiding hand, skilfully extracting the stories then shaping the manuscript. At Hodder, I have to thank Rowena Webb and Maddy Price along