Saratoga News

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Terrie Ogilvie Christiansen manages The Cats, a Los Gatos landmark.

The Cats offers relief from goat-cheese fare

By Suzanne Cristallo

The Cats will never change. That is a promise by owner Diane Ogilvie and her manager daughter, Terrie Ogilvie Christiansen.

The Cats is a down-home place, with vintage wood walls darkened by decades of barbecue smoke and tile floors that have borne the weight of silt from two floods and been riddled with cracks from earthquakes.

The bar is for settling in and listening to blues singers and guitarists. It has served bikers in the '60s, hippies in the '70s and yuppies in the '80s, and today hosts those seeking relief from menus offering warmed goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes.

It is the last roadhouse--a refuge for real mountain folk and the flatlanders who wannabe.

Since the 1890s, when it was a stagecoach stop and a favorite trysting place for drivers who brought women from town, the enduring old building has housed a variety of owners and given rise to many tales. One of them, that the place was a bordello and still has small rooms upstairs, is fiction. Another, that the place is owned by albinos living on the hill behind the restaurant, is also fiction.

Christiansen thinks that story was born when her father, who has a full head of white hair, once frightened some beer-drinking teenagers from a nearby hill by running out in a white robe and jumping on the bumper of their car.

Since the end of stagecoach days in 1920, The Cats has served as a gun shop, a real-estate office and a biker bar.

It became a bar and restaurant in 1967, when Toni Crowley finally opened it after a two-year delay waiting for a liquor license. Crowley sold it to Diane Ogilvie in 1977 but continues to wait tables on weekends.

Both women are professional singers, and the big news at The Cats is that the two women, both 77, are planning a revival of their old act, bringing back old favorites like "Bill Bailey" with a lot of improvisation. Meanwhile, headliners for Friday and Saturday nights alternate between seven acts.

Since 1978, Chris Hickey has been braving 120-degree heat at the open barbecue to serve up to 300 dinners a night of chops, lamb and beef steaks, ribs, chicken and swordfish with huge baked potatoes slathered in butter and salad, all for a price in the range of $10 to $12.

The Cats, 17533 Santa Cruz Highway, Los Gatos. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 3:30 p.m.-midnight, dinners 5:30-11 p.m. 354-4020.