Street Cat named Bob by James Bowen becomes global bestseller

The life-changing transformation comes down to the unlikely pairing of Bowen with a wily green-eyed tom cat named Bob. Together, they must count as the oddest of London literary couples.

Bob was a stray Bowen adopted in 2007 after finding him curled up on a doormat outside a ground-floor flat in Covent Garden, malnourished and with an abscess on his back leg.

After spending all of his busker's wages to buy a course of antibiotics, Bowen brought the cat home and named him after a character in his favourite television series, Twin Peaks.

The two became local celebrities selling The Big Issue outside Angel tube station, eventually coming to the notice of literary agent, Mary Panchos.

"If I was to go busking now I would probably cause a street hazard," says Bowen on his first publicity tour to Australia, where he once lived.

"I tend not to do too many public appearances on the street for security reasons; people try to touch Bob. If one person touches Bob, everyone wants to touch Bob, so I have to have a 'no touching' policy. It didn't used to be like that but there are so many fans. When I do a book signing there is [sic] 400 people queued around the block."

A Street Cat Named Bob, and its spin-offs, World According to Bob, For the Love of Bob, Gift from Bob, Bob No Ordinary Cat, written with Garry Jenkins, have sold more than one million copies in the UK, and another 13,000 in Australia.

A modern day riff on the bad-boy-made-good theme, in which man is transformed by an animal's devotion, the books' success owes to the extraordinary popularity of pet cat memes on social media.

Bob, Bowen says, brought structure and love to his life. "It was no longer about being selfish and my own personal self destruction, it was about healing for the both of us."

Bowen, 35, was born in Surrey but moved to Melbourne with his mum when he was three, shifting to Western Australia two years later. In coastal Quinns Rock he stuck out with his accent and eager-to-impress attitude and was bullied. Bowen didn't get on with his stepfather, got into drugs, and at 18 followed his dream of becoming a rock star all the way to the UK. He fell out with his half-sister's husband and ended up homeless. As Bowen tells it, heroin became an easy escape from reality.

Absolute rock bottom came sleeping rough in London in the snow Christmas Day 1999. "I remember waking up, I was sleeping near this hot air vent from the kitchen of a hotel, and ... walking past the Covent Garden Hotel I remember seeing the hotel manager and her assistant having brunch, or whatever. I waved to them and said, 'Merry Christmas,' and they looked past me, like that".

Bowen has the restlessness of a former addict, his foot tapping constantly. He reads, plays music and makes endless charity appearances to keep himself diverted.

The books have not yet made him a rich man but he has taken out a mortgage on a house in north east London, and he is getting his teeth done.

"I've never owned a house before. I've always been in government-supported housing and cheap accommodation; it's an incredible step up for me."