Room 8
Species	Cat
Gender	Male
Born	1947 Elysian Heights, CA
Died	13 August 1968 Elysian Heights, CA
Resting place	Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park
Owner	Elysian Heights Elementary School

Room 8 was a neighborhood cat that wandered into a classroom at Elysian Heights Elementary School, Echo Park, California. In Biology, a species is one of the basic units of Biological classification and a Taxonomic rank. Gender comprises a range of differences between men and women extending from the biological to the social Elysian Heights is a neighborhood within Echo Park in Los Angeles California, in the United States. California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. Echo Park is a neighborhood in Los Angeles northwest of downtown. He would live in the school during the school year and then disappear for the summer, returning when classes started again. ^[1]

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". Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest Magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971 with more of an emphasis on Leo Kottke wrote an instrumental called "Room 8" that was included in his 1971 album, Mudlark. Leo Kottke (born 11 September 1945, Athens, Georgia, US) is an acoustic guitarist. Mudlark is Leo Kottke 's fourth album his first on a major label ( Capitol) and his first to feature other musicians ^[1]

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.

His obituary in the Los Angeles Times rivaled that of major political figures, running three columns with a photograph. The Los Angeles Times (also known as the LA Times) is a daily Newspaper published in Los Angeles California and distributed The cat was so famous that his obituary ran in papers as far away as Hartford, Connecticut. The students raised the funds for his gravestone. ^[1]

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.

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

Further Reading

• A Cat Named Room 8, Beverly Mason, Putnam, 1966 ISBN 0-399-60085-X

References

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