The Little Book of Bob: Life Lessons from a Streetwise Cat
By: James Bowen / Narrated By: Kristopher Milnes
Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
The best person to teach you wisdom will always be a cat!
Don’t get me wrong I love dogs (Miss my own two who passed of old age aaaages ago), and I generally love all animals (Tho’ I rather wince when I trap and carry cockroaches to the outdoors), but yes, I must say that you learn quite a lot by hanging around, and loving, a cat or two, or three, and such. So you bet, I had no problems with this little book of wisdom from author James Bowen, who wrote all the other Bob Offerings, coming from what he learned from his ginger cat, Bob.
Just to let you in on who our guide, Bowen, is: Prior to meeting Bob, James had been living hand-to-mouth, busking on the streets for his income, living in, hmm… I believe his housing was subsidized, plus he was taking methadone. Cuz you see, even earlier to that, Bowen had been homeless, sleeping either on the streets or in a shelter here or there, and he had a wicked drug addiction. So by the time he came upon the injured and homeless ginger cat, he was in a better place, but his world was small and it was a precarious existence.
Not very many people even notice sick or injured animals but after looking for an owner, Bowen took the cat in and used a LOT of his resources to help the cat, now named Bob, back to health—addressing his injuries, getting him neutered, giving him his shots. When it was time to let the rough and tumble boy go back to his life, said rough and tumble boy decided that by Bowen’s side was now home. He’s been with Bowen, walking, leading/following ever since.
This led to several books, and after reading what reviewers said about a different fairly recent one—that it was a rehashing of several stories and was a total ripoff—I kinda went into The Little Book of Bob worrying about things of that ilk.
No, no, no! This does have a few of the stories, but there’s a different take on them: Bowen’s writing about what he learned from those experiences. And how often to do any of us stop and absorb what we’ve experienced to see what lessons can be gleaned from them? Plus, there are plenty of new stories as now Bob and Bowen (Notice who gets top billing there? Ha!) have had some success in their lives from the interest in their lives.
My personal favorites are the ones that show just how much Bowen has learned from Bob. There were parts where I became exasperated in The World According to Bob because I thought some pretty unfortunate things happened all due to Bowen making incredibly poor choices and not managing his knee-jerk temper. Here we see that Bowen has learned impulse control because, in one instance, he doesn’t want his temper to make a situation worse, and it’d make things dangerous for Bob to be around. He now has Bob’s safety to consider first and foremost. And there are the times where Bowen is in a bad situation, but now he looks at Bob and feels gratitude for what he has rather than despair over situations that can’t be controlled.
Here are the sections where Bob has taught Bowen many lessons: In Bob we trust - Lessons in Friendship; It’s a Bob’s life - What we need to be happy; How to get the most out of life; Bob vs the World - How to survive all that life throws at us; The Zen of Bob - How to be good to ourselves; The University of Bob - Lessons in Day-to-Day life. Each section has plenty of little instances of the interactions between our two fine men (Yes, yes, yes; one’s a cat).
While the things Bowen has learned may be very much common sense, I don’t believe they’re easily dismissible, especially as they’re presented. My favorite, which I always have problems with, comes from the little story where a woman squawks at James about how cruel it is to keep Bob on a lead, how she’ll be calling the RSPCA (U.K.), berating him the entire time. Though he shrugs her off, the incident gnaws at him, and he’s worried how he’ll manage an interview when he’s soooo angry. But then he looks at Bob once they get to the TV station, and Bob’s completely happy, having forgotten the situation eeeeeons ago. James realizes that it’s right and proper to let go, that he himself is the only one choosing to hold onto such negativity.
See? There’re many of little ditties like that, bite-sized and Bob-flavored that make the whole, tiny, little audiobook go down well. And with Kristopher Milnes doing the narration honors as usual, one really gets the whole Bob Essence. I’m so thankful the publishers or whoever haven’t brought in someone new to narrate!
And as I write this, I have my own ginger cat (Well, my sister’s) flopped all over me showing me how decadent a luxurious stretch can be. Okay, enough time hunched over laptop, gonna go channel Bob, and Jules, and get a good stretch going…!
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