This friendship story between a cat and a London street musician is worthy of a writer’s pen. In fact, it was embodied on paper by the musician himself, who retrained as a writer and thus gained considerable fame.
Bowen, born in 1979 in Great Britain, spent his childhood in Australia. In 1997, he returned to his homeland to live with his stepsister. However, he soon became homeless. His life, in general, cannot be called happy: he was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a child and became a heroin addict after losing his home.
Throughout his life, from early childhood until the spring of 2007, James was a real outcast. Until he met a homeless orange cat with a seriously injured paw. Bowen did everything to heal the cat (whom he named “Bob”).
Then the musician started taking Bob to his street performances, winning a certain popularity among the London audience thanks to this combo of a man and a cat. After some time, James retrained as a newspaper vendor.
But people continued to come to him just to see this duo. Videos with James and Bob began to appear on YouTube. It was then that Bowen firmly decided to quit drugs. In fact, it happened thanks to Bob.
To say that James’s life has changed dramatically is an understatement. Since then, he has written six books (co-authored with writer Garry Jenkins), each containing stories about the author’s and Bob’s life.
The books became bestsellers, and one of them, “A Street Cat Named Bob,” was nominated for the prestigious British National Book Award. In 2016, a film based on this book was released, which received the award for “Best British Film” at the British National Film Awards.
