- published: 02 Mar 2016
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Room 8 (1947–1968) was a neighborhood cat that wandered into a classroom at Elysian Heights Elementary School, Echo Park, California. He would live in the school during the school year and then disappear for the summer, returning when classes started again.
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 called Room 8 was written as well. Look magazine ran a three-page 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.
As he got older, he was injured in a cat fight and suffered from 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.