Multiple cable on the same switch

Yeah it's posible on some kit but you're talking enterprise grade stuff but at that point it's more common to use fiber connections between switches rather then multiple copper ones.

What sort of network load are you supporting? must be a fair bit for the bottle neck to be between switches.

The home traffic from 8 PCs is unlikley to cap out the transfer capacity of a half decent 8 port switch even on 10/100 setup, if it's a gigabit switch I'd just go for whatever the cheapest option is