I was beginning to despair when I met a woman towards the end of the Passage, a short distance before it opens out opposite Islington Green. She pointed down the road.
‘I saw a cat running down the road that way,’ she said. ‘It was going like a rocket, it didn’t look like it was going to stop. It was veering towards the main road, it looked like it was thinking about crossing.’
At the end of the passage, I emerged out on to the open street and scanned the area. Bob was fond of Islington Green and often stopped to do his business there. It was also where the Blue Cross vans would park. It was worth a look. I quickly crossed the road and ran into the small, enclosed grassy area. There were some bushes there where he often rummaged around. I knelt down and looked inside. Even though the light had gone and I was barely able to see my hand in front of me, I hoped against hope that I might see a pair of bright eyes staring back at me.
‘Bob, Bob, are you here mate?’ But there was nothing.
I walked down to the other corner of the enclosed Green and shouted a couple more times. But, apart from groans from a couple of drunks who were sitting on one of the benches, all I could hear was the insistent droning of the traffic.
I left the Green and found myself facing the big Waterstone’s bookshop. Bob and I often popped in there and the staff there always made a fuss of him. I knew I really was clutching at straws now, but maybe he had headed there for refuge.
It was quiet inside the store and some of the staff were getting ready to shut up for the evening. There were just a few people browsing the shelves.
I recognised one of the ladies behind the till. By now I was sweating, breathing heavily and must obviously have looked agitated.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘I’ve lost Bob. A dog attacked us and Bob ran off. He didn’t come in here did he?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, looking genuinely concerned. ‘I’ve been here and I’ve not seen him. But let me ask upstairs.’
She picked up the phone and dialled to the other department.
‘You haven’t seen a cat up there have you?’ she said. The slow, shake of her head that followed told me all I needed to know. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘But if we do see him we’ll make sure to keep him.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
It was only then, as I wandered back out of Waterstone’s and into the now dark evening, that it hit me. I’ve lost him.
I was in bits. For the next few minutes I was in a daze. I carried on walking down Essex Road, but by now I had given up on asking in the cafés, restaurants and pubs.
This was the route we came in every day – and went home again every night. When I saw a bus bound for Tottenham, another thought formed in my frazzled mind. He couldn’t have? Could he?
There was an inspector standing at one of the bus stops and I asked him whether he’d seen a cat getting on a bus. I knew Bob, he was smart enough to do it. But the guy just looked at me like I’d asked him whether he’d seen aliens getting on the number 73. He just shook his head and turned away from me.
I knew cats had a great sense of direction and have been known to make long journeys. But there was no way he was going to find his way all the way back to Tottenham. It was a good three and a half miles, through some pretty rough parts of London. We’d never walked that way, we’d only ever done it on the bus. I quickly decided that was simply a non-starter.
The next half hour or so was a rollercoaster of conflicting emotions. One minute I’d convince myself that he couldn’t stray far without being found and identified. Loads of people locally knew who he was. And even if he was found by someone who didn’t know him, if they were sensible they would see that he was microchipped and would know that all his data was at the national microchip centre.
No sooner had I reassured myself of that, than a stream of very different consciousness began washing over me as, all of a sudden, a nightmare series of thoughts started pinging away in my head.
This might have been what happened three years ago. This might have been how he’d come to end up in my block of flats that spring evening. This might have been the trigger for him to decide it was time to move on again. Inside I was utterly torn. The logical, sensible side of me was saying, ‘He will be OK, you’ll get him back.’ But the wilder, more irrational side of me was saying something much bleaker. It was saying: ‘He’s gone, you won’t see him again.’ I wandered up and down Essex Road for the best part of an hour. It was now pitch dark, and the traffic was snarled up virtually all the way back to the end of Islington High Street. I was all at sea. I really didn’t know what to do. Without really thinking, I just started walking down Essex Road towards Dalston. My friend Belle lived in a flat about a mile away. I’d head there.
I was walking past an alleyway when I saw a flash of a tail. It was black and thin, very different to Bob’s, but I was in such a state my mind was playing tricks and I convinced myself it must be him.
‘Bob,’ I shouted, diving into the dark space, but there was nothing there.
Somewhere in the dark I heard a meowing sound. It didn’t sound like him. After a couple of minutes, I moved on.
By now the traffic had eased off. The night suddenly fell ominously quiet. For the first time I noticed that the stars were out. It wasn’t quite the Australian night sky but it was still impressive. A few weeks ago I’d been staring at the stars in Tasmania. I’d told everyone in Australia that I was coming back to care for Bob. A fine job I’ve done of that, I said, inwardly cursing myself.
For a moment or two I wondered whether my extended stay in Australia had actually been a factor in all this. Had that time apart loosened the ties between me and Bob? Had the fact that I’d been absent for six weeks made him question my commitment to him? When the Rottweiler had attacked, had he decided that he could no longer rely on me to protect him? The thought made me want to scream.
As Belle’s road loomed into view I was still feeling close to tears. What was I going to do without him? I’d never find a companion like Bob again. It was then that it happened. For the first time in years I experienced an overwhelming need for a fix.
I tried to bat it away immediately, but once more my subconscious started fighting a battle of wills. Somewhere inside my head I could feel myself thinking that if I really had lost Bob, I wouldn’t be able to cope, I’d have to anaesthetise myself from the grief I was already feeling.
Belle had, like me, been fighting for years. But I knew her flatmate still dabbled. The closer I got to her street, the more terrifying the thoughts in my head were becoming.
By the time I reached Belle’s house, it was approaching ten o’clock. I had been wandering the streets for a couple of hours. In the distance, the sirens were wailing once more, the cops were on their way to another stabbing or punch-up in a pub. I couldn’t have cared less.
As I walked up the path to the dimly lit front entrance I spotted a shape sitting quietly in the shadows to the side of the building. It was unmistakably the silhouette of a cat, but I’d given up hope by now and just assumed it was another stray, sheltering from the cold. But then I saw his face, that unmistakeable face.
‘Bob.’
He let out a plaintive meow, just like the one in the hallway three years ago, as if to say: ‘Where have you been? I’ve been waiting here for ages.’
I scooped him up and held him close.