I just finished reading a wonderful book called: „A Street Cat Named Bob“. I gave it as present to my mother for her birthday, last year. I knew nothing about it, I just noticed it one night rushing into a highway service area to get some food standing at the checkout queue. There he was: this beautiful, sweet cat with ginger fur and a scarf around his neck. He reminded me so much of my parents´cat, also with ginger fur and so very cute! It was my turn at the checkout, I didn´t have much time to think, so I instinctively grabbed it and paid for it. I thought: well, this is probably not the most profound book I´ve ever bought in my life, but the picture is already worth it! Without knowing it, the very thing that is so often described in the book, had already occured to me: I had immediately fallen for Bob´s charm!
And how wrong I was, when I thought that „A Street Cat named Bob“ was just a funny, superficial story about a cute cat.
First of all it´s a true story. The story of James Bowen, the author, that at some point in his life became homeless and heroin-addict. When he met Bob, he was trying to get out of drugs and improve his life. As the author himself states, Bob literally „saved his life“, giving him the strength to change. In an interview, James Bowen said that he was leading a very selfish life, before meeting him. For the first time in his life he had to care about someone else, other than himself. Someone who loved him unconditionally and followed him everywhere he went. I must admit, at this point it was really hard for me to hold back the tears. I know what it means  to get „unconditional love“ by a pet. I have two wonderful cats, and the story of how I met my cat „Flecki“ is not so different from James´s story. He also says that „Cats adopt people, never the opposite“ - how true! That´s exactly what happened to me.
James Bowen says, he felt totally invisible while living on the street. That people mostly ignored him as a homeless, or a street musician struggling to survive. With Bob on his side he suddenly became „visible“ and more and more people every day, started conversations with him on the streets of London, wanted to stroke Bob and take pictures of him.
This book made me reflect a lot upon our behavior towards homeless people, street musicians, people trying to sell us magazines in the underground.. I will never look at them the same way again! So, to my surprise, this book WAS life-changing and profound.
It really is not just a funny story about a sweet cat with a scarf. This is a very moving, true story of hope and a deep friendship between a cat and a man.
To be honest, I can´t wait to read the sequel „The World According to Bob“, and I really, really hope to see the movie very soon, as it was announced a couple of months ago.

I love cats, and my cats in particular, so much that I really decided to put them on my album "Sundressed"! I´m not kidding, they really are part of the recordings, as let´s say.. "special performances" ;-) ..I´ll write more about this later! Meanwhile you can already start listening to the tracks of the album and see if you can find them.. ;-)