Only yesterday, one of the great love stories of the modern era came to a close. The Streetcat named Bob passed away.
The Streetcat named Bob adopted James and took him on a journey that saved both their lives. As James said
“Bob saved my life. It’s as simple as that. He gave me so much more than companionship. With him at my side, I found a direction and purpose that I’d been missing. The success we achieved together through our books and films was miraculous. He’s met thousands of people, touched millions of lives. There’s never been a cat like him. And never will again. I feel like the light has gone out in my life. I will never forget him.”
As a fellow cat lover and slave to my calico lady, I could feel his loss and pain.
To those of you who have not heard of Bob and James, I urge you to seek out their books and movie... their story is a tale of such unique love and devotion that I wonder if we will ever see its like again.
In a world where there is so much hatred and loneliness, their story is one of hope and one of mutual dependency.
They were, like me, slaves to Love.
I thought that I adopted my feline family member 8 years ago. But that was not true. She adopted me - I was simply the person she nominated as her slave for the duration of her life.
My girl was in an animal shelter in and had been sent there to die. Her body so badly beaten and broken by a bunch of young thugs, she had been placed in a sack and used as a football for their fun. Kicked in front of a car, run over and left for dead in the middle of a road on a cold winters evening.
I will never know who her previous slave was but I suspect it was an older lady, much like myself - who fed her tit bits of cake and goodies like icecream - should she decide it was to her fancy.
When I met her, for the first time, she was a limp and dazed little creature, about 3 years old and destined to die.
She could not walk. She was, they suspected, brain damaged. All they wanted was someone to take her home and nurse her until she passed away from the beating that she had suffered at the hands of young bastards with no souls.
I looked at her and thought to myself " I am not up for this. " She was so frail, so devoid of any emotion or contact or movement. She had, apparently, been used as an experiment to see if certain drugs and surgery could work.
They must have done the trick because she was alive. But her eyes were blank; her body struggling and she was simply a life hanging on a thread that was a hairs breadth from snapping.
I wanted to walk away. I truly did.
But she staggered to her feet and walked towards me and collapsed within inches of my outreached hands.
She took me home.
It took months of massaging her injured limbs; months of being her slave and doing whatever I felt she needed ... but one day, she actually jumped onto the sofa beside me. She walked, jumped and became defiant and played with her toys and snuggled up beside me and purred and gradually, became whole again.
She still will not put her head under the covers in my bed. She still hates being confined. She lives indoors and runs away if any one other than me approaches her. she has accepted my building manager and the odd tradie here and there - but, by and large, once bitten twice shy is her mantra.
To win the trust of a cat is high praise indeed.
The Streetcat named Bob is famous for having saved James Bowen from a life that was not going all that well. Along came Bob and James went from drug addict to a slave to a cat named Bob. I urge you to read about Bob and how he changed the life of a human being who went from being a slave to drugs to a slave of a cat.
The passing of Bob is a sad day - not just for James Bowen but to all of us who find ourselves slaves to our cats.
We cat slaves enjoy our slavery. Much like many men and women love to feel enslaved to the chains of love for our children and our parents and our countries. our husbands and our wives.
We are all slaves to love.
For myself, the day I became a slave to my calico cat who needed me, it was because we needed each other.
We have mucked along quite nicely over the years but who is slave and who is slave master is still open to debate.
Well, I had better get off and make sure her dinner is ready... I don't want to be late....
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