Gold, frankincense and purr
THE STORY OF A HOMELESS MAN AND HIS STREET CAT LOOKS SET TO BECOME THE YEAR’S FURRIEST CHRISTMAS FILM. JAMES MOTTRAM GOES ON SET TO INVESTIGATE
CHRISTMAS has come early – at least if you’re standing where I am at Twickenham Studios. I’m on the festive set of A Christmas Gift From Bob, the new film featuring everyone’s favourite street cat. Everywhere you look, animal coordinators are clicking buzzers as they try to get a petulant pussy to play ball – or, in this case, knock over a shelf of food in a mock-up kitchen. Remarkably, Mandy – the cat playing friendly feline Bob – performs right on cue.
‘Wasn’t it great?’ yells director Charles Martin Smith. ‘That worked out really well.’
Standing on the sidelines is the quietly unassuming James Bowen. A busker and recovering heroin addict, Bowen was inspired to get clean after ginger stray Bob appeared in his hallway in 2007 and never left.
When Bowen chronicled this inspirational journey, 2012’s A Street Cat Named Bob became an international best-seller and, in 2016, a hit movie. Now comes the Christmasthemed follow-up based on the short story A Gift From Bob and again starring Luke Treadaway as Bowen.
‘It delves into the Christmas before everything changed for us,’ says Bowen, ‘and how things were tough.’
Right now, it is four days into the shoot and the cast are going a bit Christmas stir crazy.
‘I did listen to All I Want For Christmas Is You 17 times on the first day – Mariah Carey is coming out of my ears!’ laughs Kristina Tonteri-Young, who has gone from starring in Netflix fantasy Warrior Nun to playing Bea, Bowen’s friend who works in a housing project. Tonteri-Young, 22, has a good handle on why this stirring tale appeals.
‘What really draws people in to stick with the story is that it doesn’t skate over any of the hard facts,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t embellish the story – it doesn’t hide any of the toughness and the horrible times James had before with Bob, before he got clean. That kind of brings people with us.’
She hopes the film will become one of those perennial Christmas movies people watch every year.
‘It speaks about family and how your family isn’t just your blood
relatives,’ she says. ‘I think that’s such an important thing. Even if you don’t have that, you don’t need to feel like you don’t have family. You just have to look around you. And there will be people who will be your friends, and pets. That’s what makes a family.’
With the country in lockdown#2, A Christmas Gift From Bob feels like the title suggests – an early present in a year where we could all do with a bit of festive cheer. Bowen agrees.
‘It’s going to be a real winner for Christmas,’ he says. ‘I think people are going to come away feeling really happy. It’s a beautiful story. It’s based on my life but it still pulls on my heart-strings.’
Sadly, the film feels even more poignant now. In June, Bob died after he was hit by a car, leaving Bowen devastated.
‘I feel like the light has gone out in my life,’ Bowen wrote. ‘I will never forget him.’
Concluding with a dedication to Bob that won’t leave a dry eye in the house, the film now plays like a heartmelting tribute to a unique cat that
‘touched millions of lives’, as Bowen tenderly put it. Bowen and his fiancée Monika now have two new kittens – Bandit and Gizmo – to contend with. And Bob, of course, will live on – both in the hearts of Bowen and Bob’s legions of admirers, and in popular culture. After several successful web-only cartoons, an animated series, Streetcat Bob, is currently available on Sky Kids, alongside several children’s books featuring Bob.
Certainly Bowen feels people will continue to take the ‘caring and sharing’ message at the core of the story to heart.
‘It’s about treating people with decency and caring about other creatures and things like that,’ he says. ‘And about how some people have struggles and issues and you’ve just got to be able to help them.’
What better message for Christmas is there than that?
‘What draws people in is that it doesn’t embellish the story or skate over hard facts’
A Christmas Gift From Bob is available on demand now