The citizens of Los Angeles have not forgotten about P-22, the furtively majestic mountain lion of Griffith Park, who died a week before Christmas, at the age of about twelve. A handsome beast with amber eyes and a white muzzle, P-22 was probably born in the Santa Monica Mountains, the coastal range west of L.A. His father was P-1, the first animal to have been tagged in a National Park Service mountain-lion study that began in 2002. (“P” stands for puma; the cats are known variously as pumas, mountain lions, panthers, catamounts, and cougars.) At the age of around one and a half, P-22 made a perilous twenty-mile journey eastward, presumably in search of uncontested territory. He crossed Interstate 405; loped through the hills above Westside L.A.; traversed the 101; and reached a reasonably safe haven in Griffith Park, a forty-two-hundred-acre expanse of urban wilderness northeast of Hollywood. In 2012, the biologist Miguel Ordeñana was reviewing images from a remote camera in the park when he saw, to his amazement, the sturdy hindquarters of a massive feline. There had been occasional puma sightings in the park, but no one had conceived of a big cat residing there full time.
The L.A. Times reported P-22’s existence in 2012, and his rise to fame began. A photographer from National Geographic caught an image of him prowling at night, with the Hollywood sign aglow on the hill above. Two homeowners in Los Feliz, a neighborhood south of Griffith Park, discovered him resting placidly in a crawl space. Dozens of other residents recorded glimpses of P-22 on doorbell cameras. When, in 2016, he became the lead suspect in the death of a koala at the Los Angeles Zoo, a local politician argued that he should be removed, but no action was taken. Instead, the L.A. City Council instituted P-22 Day, which became a yearly celebration in Griffith Park. Songs were written, documentaries filmed, school curricula devised. P-22’s renown crossed the ocean; the Guardian dubbed him the “Brad Pitt of mountain lions,” in reference both to his fetching looks and to his inability to find a mate.