Room 8
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Room 8 (c. 1947 - August 13, 1968) was a neighborhood
cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...
who wandered into a classroom in 1952 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. News cameras would arrive at the school at the beginning of the year waiting for the cat's return; he became famous and would receive up to 100 letters a day addressed to him at the school. Eventually, he 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 Leo Kottke (born September 11, 1945) is an acoustic guitarist. He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He overcame a series of personal obstacles, including parti ...
wrote an instrumental called "Room 8" that was included in his 1971 album, ''
Mudlark A mudlark is someone who scavenges in river mud for items of value, a term used especially to describe those who scavenged this way in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries. The practice of searching the banks of rivers for items cont ...
''. As he got older, Room 8 was injured in a cat fight and suffered from feline pneumonia, so a family near the school volunteered to take him in. The school's janitor would find him at the end of the school day and carry him across the street. His
obituary An obituary ( obit for short) is an article about a recently deceased person. Newspapers often publish obituaries as news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on positive aspects of the subject's life, this is not always the case. Ac ...
in the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
'' 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 Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...
. The students raised the funds for his gravestone. He is buried at the
Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park The Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, formerly called the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery, is a pet cemetery located in Calabasas, California, United States.Calabasas, California Calabasas (from Spanish ''calabazas'' " gourds") is a city in the southwestern region of the San Fernando Valley, between the foothills of the Santa Monica and Santa Susanna mountains.The Room 8 Memorial Foundation


See also

*
List of individual cats This is a list of famous cats which achieved some degree of popularity either in their own right or by association with someone famous. Before the modern era * Nedjem or Nojem ( Egyptian: ''nḏm'' "Sweet One" or "Sweetie"), 15th century BC. The ...


Further reading

* ''A Cat Called Room 8'', Virginia Finley and Beverly Mason, illustrated by Valerie Martin, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1966, , LCCN 66-14332.


References


External links


Room 8's page on the Elysian Heights Elementary School websiteRoom 8 California's Famous Classroom Cat
*

*[https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/courant/access/928075482.html?dids=928075482:928075482&FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE:AI&date=Aug+26%2C+1968&author=&pub=The+Hartford+Courant&desc=Room+8+Cat+Will+No+Longer+Attend+School&pqatl=google The Hartford Courant August 1968] {{pet-stub 1947 animal births 1968 animal deaths Echo Park, Los Angeles Individual cats in the United States