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sound of knocking. When he saw Titch and Princess walking in, his first reaction was to arch his back and hiss. Cats arch their backs to make themselves look bigger in a fight, apparently. This is why they also get their hair to stand on end. In this particular case, however, Bob needn’t have bothered. Princess was a really easy-going and affectionate dog. She could also be a little nervous. So the moment she saw Bob in full, confrontational mode she just froze to the spot. It was a complete reversal of the normal roles, where the physically bigger dog intimidates the smaller cat.
    ‘It’s all right, Princess,’ I said. ‘He won’t hurt you.’
    I then led her into my bedroom and shut the door so that she felt safe.
    ‘James, mate. Is there any way you can look after Princess for the day?’ Titch said, cutting straight to the chase when I handed him a mug of tea. ‘I’ve got to go and sort out my social security situation.’
    ‘Sure,’ I said, knowing how long those sorts of things could take. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Should it Bob?’
    He gave me an enigmatic look.
    ‘We are working at Angel today. She’ll be all right with us there won’t she?’ I said.
    ‘Yeah, no problem,’ Titch said. ‘So how about if I pick her up there this evening at about 6pm?’
    ‘OK,’ I said.
    ‘Right, better dash. Got to be in the front of the queue if I want to be seen this side of Christmas,’ Titch said, popping his head into my bedroom.
    ‘Be a good girl, Princess,’ he said, before heading off.
    As he’d demonstrated again already this morning, Bob didn’t have a major problem with dogs unless they were aggressive towards him. Even then, he could handle himself pretty well and had seen off a few scary looking mongrels with a growl and a loud hiss. Back during our early days busking around Covent Garden, I’d even seen him give one over-aggressive dog a bop on the nose with his paw.
    Bob wasn’t just territorial with dogs. He wasn’t a huge fan of other cats, either. There were times when I wondered whether he didn’t actually know he was a cat. He seemed to look at them as if they were inferior beings, unfit to breathe the same air as him. Our route to and from work had become more complicated in recent months thanks to the cancellation of a bus service that used to take us straight from Tottenham High Road to Angel. So we’d started taking different buses, one of which required us to change in Newington Green, a mile or so from Angel. When money was tight, we’d walk to Angel. As we did so, Bob would sniff and stare whenever we went past what was clearly a cat house.
    If he ever saw another cat out and about he would let them know in no uncertain terms that this was his turf.
    Once when he saw a tabby cat, skulking around on Islington Green Bob had been transformed. He had been straining so hard to get at this upstart invading his territory, it had been as if I’d had a particularly aggressive dog on the end of the lead. He’d had to stamp his authority on the situation. Obviously, he’d already felt the need to do the same with Princess.
    If I had any reservations, they were that Princess might be a bit of an inconvenience. Dogs were so much more hard work than cats. For a start, you couldn’t put them on your shoulders as you walked down the street, a design flaw that, I soon discovered, slowed you down considerably.
    Walking to the bus stop Princess was a right royal pain. She pulled on the lead, stopped to sniff random patches of grass and veered off to squat down and go to the toilet no less than three times in the space of a couple of hundred yards.
    ‘Come on Princess, or we’ll never get there,’ I said, already regretting my decision. Suddenly I remembered why I had never wanted to adopt a dog as a pet.
    If I was struggling to establish some kind of control over her, however, Bob had no such trouble. On the bus, he took up his normal position on the seat next to the window, from where