Updated March 15, 2016 with new photos from Richard Beal, author of Highway 17: The Road to Santa Cruz.

Living in Santa Cruz and driving back and forth over Highway 17, I always thought the Cats Restaurant and the two cat statues just a few hundred feet south of it derived their inspiration from the nearby town of Los Gatos (the cats in Spanish). But this is apparently not true.

The eight feet tall cats, Leo and Leona, have kept watch over the entrance to “Poets Canyon” since 1922. They were commissioned by writer Colonel Charles Erskine Scott Wood and poet, suffragist Sara Bard Field to mark the entrance to their 34 acres; their safe haven and place to philosophize and write poetry.  They built a house, planted a vineyard and put big wine casks out along the road as a way to protest prohibition. The property was a hang out for artists, writers and musicians of the day. Sara wrote well known poems while living there: The Pale Woman, Barrabas, and A Darkling Plain. Charlie Chaplin, John Steinbeck and even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the place.

The statues were originally modeled in clay and then made in concrete. Created by sculptor Robert Paine, he lived on the property for the year it took him to make them and accepted only a small payment. According to Richard A. Beal, author of “Highway 17: The Road to Santa Cruz,” Charles and Sara conceived of their cat statues not  because of neighboring “Los Gatos” but because they just liked cats. Los Gatos was named in the 1840s after the wildcats in the area and Leo and Leona don’t look completely like mountain lions or bobcats, so it could be!

Wood died at age 92 in early 1944, his last years in failing health. Field, who had married Wood in 1938, continued to own the property until 1955, when she sold it to an oil executive, Fred G. Hampton.

The estate was owned by the Ogilvie family from 1960 until it sold in Nov. 2013. Eva “Diane” Ogilvie, was an entrepreneurial Los Gatos woman who apparently persuaded Hampton to sell to her. It remained in the Ogilvie family, largely unseen by the public. The Ogilvies expanded the property to 75 acres, with a total of nine parcels. Diane’s husband Bruce died in 2003 and when Diane died in 2011, the family decided to sell. Artisan Sothbys International listed the property for sale in late 2013 for $8.95 million. It sold and the new owner says the historic aspects of the site will be preserved.

Todays Cats Restaurant and Tavern was a stop on the old stage line from Santa Cruz to San Jose. It was a raucous social gathering place and in the 1920s was a speakeasy and bordello. In the 50s and 60s it was variably a realty office, gun shop and sporting goods store. It became a restaurant again in 1967. The Ogilvie Family bought the restaurant in 1977 and ran it until 2006. It stood closed until 2011, when new owners opened it on New Years Eve. Diane Ogilvie died on Oct 3, 2011 and was hoping to support the new owners by eating there when it opened. Unfortunately, she did not make it.

In October 2013, the Museum of Los Gatos Art and History ran a six month long exhibit “American Bohemia:  The Cats Estate in Los Gatos” it explored the lives of Wood and Field.

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