Meet the real Street Cat Named Bob – and watch him give his owner a high five

Owner James Bowen said: ‘I didn’t know it then but the love he was giving me was helping me to change my ways’
Amy Ashenden26 October 2016

The real owner who inspired the film A Street Cat Named Bob says he was able to turn around his life of homelessness and heroin addiction thanks to the love of an injured cat he rescued.

Bob, the real life cat, not only turned around the life of owner James Bowen after he found himself homeless and addicted to heroin, but also gives high fives.

James began sleeping rough after a rift with his family and difficulties finding work. After running out of friends’ couches to sleep on, he found himself homeless and turning to heroin – until one day he came across Bob, an injured cat that he decided to rescue with the last of his busking money.

James said: “He had a big abscess on his leg. He’d been sitting there for three days on this mat.

Lifelong friends: The cat gives his owner a high five 
ITV/This Morning

“I knocked on the door and I said ‘your cat’s been here for three days’ and they were like ‘oh it’s not my cat’.

“So I invited him up and I had some tuna and stuff which I gave him.”

James, who moved to Australia when he was three, told ITV’s This Morning how he ended up sleeping rough: “I was moving around often, I was never in one primary school for very long at a time, boarding schools, [and] things like that – my mother was very much a working person.

“I kind of got raised by au pairs and nannies for the younger years, and then I think because I didn’t have a standard set of friends, I didn’t know how to properly integrate.

James and Bob
ITV/This Morning

“I often ended up trying to overcompensate and ended up getting bullied. Because of that, when I was 18, I thought I’d come back and try and reunite with my family over here.

“I was quite a bit of a tearaway, sort of a goth, when I came back – so piercings and long, black hair.

“I think it was a bit of a shock to my family and my work didn’t really go through very well, and I ended up sleeping on couches.

“Then when I ran out of couches to sleep on, I was sleeping rough.”

James said after running out of other people’s sofas to sleep on, he found himself sleeping on the street and, at his lowest point, turned to heroin.

He said: “It’s an escape isn’t it? When you’re out on the streets, you look for any way to try and be more comfortable.”

But Bob, the cat who has become the star of the film about James’ life, helped him turn his life around when James found him injured and also in need of a friend.

Owner James Bowne
ITV/This Morning

James added: “While I was feeding him, I discovered the abscess on his back leg, took him to the RSPCA and spent literally the last money I’d made from busking the day before on his antibiotics.

“During that time [I was] trying to find where he lived, couldn’t, and then tried to send him on his way, thinking he might know where he’s going.

“Instead, he started following me a little more each day, until one day he actually got on the bus with me like in that scene [of A Street Cat Named Bob].

“It’s like having a child – he taught me that I had to buckle up. I had to take responsibility for him.

“I didn’t know it then but the love he was giving me was helping me to change my ways.”

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