One memorable cat
Out of all of the cats he has come to know, there’s just one that, author Paul Koudounaris says, “represents the quintessence of what it means to be an American cat, whose story is so perfectly and beautifully American that it encapsulates the American cat’s experience from the time they sailed on ships until now.
“That cat, for me, is Room 8.”
Room 8 was a gray-and-white street cat that showed up one day in 1952 in a sixth-grade classroom at Elysian Heights Elementary School in Los Angeles. The stray “ransacked everybody’s lunch while the kids were at recess,” he says, but the cat had “an endearing quality to it.”
Room 8 became the class mascot and, eventually, the entire school’s. For 16 years, he’d head off into the nearby hills at the end of the school day and return the next morning. At the end of each school year, he’d disappear, showing up again when school resumed.
Room 8 inspired a book and the creation of a charitable foundation. Newspaper reporters covered his return each fall. By the time he died in 1968, he had received more than 10,000 fan letters.
Room 8 was “a tough, determined, smart survivor, a mix of a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” Koudounaris says.
“I call him the quintessential American cat. He was a cat from the street. He’s tough. But in the end, he chooses the people he wants to bond with.” Kiddo didn’t take well to the trip, prompting a crew member — making the first-ever airship-to-shore radio communication — to ask a crew member on the ground to “come and get this (expletive) cat!”
The failed crossing, humiliating for humans, made Kiddo famous. Koudounaris says Kiddo went on a national tour, earning $2,000 a week. Kiddo later would die in another airship accident, but “what Kiddo started can’t be stopped,” he says. “The age of the cat is upon us.”
America also would see its first movie star cat in Pepper, a stray born underneath the stage of film pioneer Mack Sennett’s studio, who made 17 credited film appearances and appeared with such stars as Fatty Arbuckle and the Keystone Kops. And when World War II came, cats fought alongside human sailors — reprising their early sailing days — and soldiers.
Extraordinary cats
During the 1950s, cats were honored in a cat food company’s award program for cats that “do extraordinary things,” Koudounaris says. Among the recipients: A cat that became a seeing-eye cat for a visually impaired dog; a cat that served as a surrogate mother to a family of baby opossums; and a cat that put out a kitchen grease fire by urinating on it.
One of Koudounaris’ upcoming projects is incorporating the research he’s done and the stories he’s unearthed in a cat-centric history ostensibly written by his own cat, Baba.
“When you hear these stories, it’s, ‘My god, why don’t we know about this history?’ ” he says. “These animalsdidsomuchforso many people and had such a fascinating (impact) in our lives in ways we don’t understand, and we take it for granted.”
Contact John Przybys at reviewjournal.com. or 702-383-0280. Follow @Jjprzybys on Twitter.