The Cats: eight-foot concrete lions, a widow's refuge — and later, Doug Merritt's address

What this is

The Cats is the historic 34-acre estate in Los Gatos's Poets Canyon, famous for Leo and Leona — the two massive, eight-foot cast-concrete felines guarding its entrance. In this record it is first Joy Avalon Stansberry's refuge after her husband's death; and decades later, after the estate was subdivided into luxury homes, one was purchased by Doug Merritt — Jonathan Hare's best friend — during his SAP or Cisco days (the uncertainty is Hare's own, preserved). A widowed grandmother and a best friend, seventy years apart, at the same gate: the kind of coincidence this record labels honestly and enjoys completely.

The S-094 conflict resolves (S-095): Merritt's Los Gatos years began at Cisco — May 2012 to April 2014 by his own record — so the home among the subdivided estate dates to the Cisco days, and the page's ask closes. The seventy-years-apart coincidence stands, now with its date.

Connected from here

There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.

Where this came from

Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.

What is missing, and how to fix it

This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.