Room 8

Room 8 (c. 1947 – August 13, 1968) was a neighborhood cat who, in 1952, wandered into a classroom at Elysian Heights Elementary School in Echo Park, California. He lived in the school during the school year and then disappeared for the summer, returning when classes started again. This pattern continued without interruption until the mid-1960s.^[1]

In the 1960s Room 8 became world famous when news cameras began to broadcast his return to school each fall. He received as many as 100 letters a day with some addressed simply to "The Cat. Los Angeles". Student "secretaries" helped fellow students reply to the fan mail.^[2][3] Eventually a local woman revealed that Room 8 was probably her cat originally until a boarder threw rocks at him and chased him away.^[4] The cat was featured in a documentary called Big Cat, Little Cat and a children's book, A Cat Called Room 8. Look magazine ran a three-page Room 8 feature by photographer Richard Hewett in November 1962, titled "Room 8: The School Cat". Leo Kottke wrote an instrumental called "Room 8" that was included in his 1971 album, Mudlark.^[1]

Room 8 enjoyed sleeping on desks during class and being read books by students.^[4] Eventually, he was injured in a fight with another cat and as he aged he developed feline pneumonia. A family near the school adopted him, and when he had difficulty walking the distance between his home and the school the school's janitor carried him across the street each day after classes were done.

Room 8 died in 1968 after attending school for 15 years, longer than most humans.^[5] His obituary in the Los Angeles Times rivaled that of major political figures, running three columns with a photograph. The cat was so famous that his obituary ran in papers as far away as Hartford, Connecticut. The students raised the funds to purchase his gravestone.^[1] He is buried at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, California. The cat's fans held a campaign to place him on a U.S. postage stamp.^[6]

Elysian Heights Elementary School has a wall mural on the outside of the school that features Room 8, and the teachers read his book to each new class. Room 8's paw prints are also displayed in cement on the sidewalk outside the school.

In 1972, a cat shelter was started in his name called The Room 8 Memorial Foundation.^[7]

• List of individual cats
• List of wild animals from Los Angeles

• Virginia Finley, Finley; Mason, Beverly (1966). A Cat Called Room 8. Illustrated by Valerie Martin. G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0-399-60085-X. LCCN 66-14332.

• Scott Mabbutt (2024). Friends of Room 8: Remembrances of a School Cat. Independently published. ISBN 979-8339652359.

• Room 8 Cats Memorial Foundation
• Room 8 memorial page of Elysian Heights Elementary School
• Room 8 at Purr 'n Furr Famous Felines
• Room 8 at The Great Cat.org
• City of Echo Park
• Los Angeles Times August 14, 1968, Section C, Page 1
• The Hartford Courant August 1968