Proud and dangerous guard cats at the entrance to the artists' abode (11 photos)

A pair of snow-white cats guard the entrance to a California estate that was once a haven for poets and painters.





Not far from Los Gatos, California, two stone cats sit frozen in eternal guard, familiar to anyone who travels from Silicon Valley to the surfing waves of Santa Cruz. These snow-white statues, named Leo and Leona, guard the gated entrance to Poets Canyon and the grand estate known by the telling, albeit simple, name of "Cats."



Auteur Charles Erskine Scott Wood and his wife, poet Sarah Bard Field, bought the Los Gatos property in 1919. They built the grand estate as a home and retreat for artists. Sculptor Robert Payne was commissioned to create the cat sculptures that have guarded the driveway gate since 1922. The estate has changed hands only a few times and remains one of the most expensive in the elite area.





Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sarah Bard Field

Just inside the gate is a place called the Cat Restaurant and Tavern. It was originally a stop for loggers hauling lumber from the Santa Cruz Mountains to San Jose. In the 1920s, it housed a spiritualist club and a brothel. Since then, it has housed everything from real estate to gun shops to sporting goods stores.



And although today drinking is legal here, and the prostitutes have long since disappeared, you can still feel the spirit of the past here, looking out the window of a tavern and imagining how, instead of cars scurrying along the highway, here the measured clatter of hooves of horses harnessed to carts. And behind the gates, guarded by cats, lived real poets.







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