P-22, Hollywood's celebrity mountain lion, ends his reign

It was late at night in Los Angeles, and artist Corie Mattie had indulged in a glass or two of wine when she heard something outside her home.

At first she thought her brother's Labrador retriever had gotten out, so she went to let him in.

It was not a chocolate lab.

"It was a [expletive] mountain lion," Ms Mattie said.

And not just any mountain lion - but the most famous mountain lion in Hollywood, and arguably the world.

His name is P-22 and the March encounter left an indelible mark, Ms Mattie said.

His green eyes glowed straight at her. She stared back. She took a quick video before hiding inside, and P-22 lingered until dawn, when he quietly made his exit over a lattice fence.

"He touched my soul. He could have destroyed me, and he didn't," she said. "It escalated quickly to my spirit animal. It went from zero to one hundred, really quick."

Ms Mattie was not the first Angeleno P-22 had bewitched. He has had the city in his thrall since 2012, when he somehow managed to get across two deadly freeways and take up residence in Griffith Park, a 4,200-acre mountain in the heart of one of the world's biggest concrete jungles.

Since then, his charisma and curious choice of urban habitat have made him a local folk hero. His plight - trapped in an urban island with no possibility of finding a mate - also made him the face of a movement to protect the threatened species.

This week, the hearts of P-22's fans were shattered when the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that, due to increasingly erratic behaviour from the big cat as he reaches old age, he now faces two grim possible futures: to be moved or to be put down. Certainly he would not return to Griffith Park.

But whatever happens, his decade-long reign has cemented his status as a Hollywood star as bright as any on the big screen.

Griffith Park is minuscule compared to a mountain lion's typical average range of 150 sq miles. Yet like many city-dwellers, P-22 was willing to sacrifice space for a prime location.

He was first discovered in February 2012, when Miguel Ordeñana, a park biologist, was checking overnight footage from his wildlife camera traps.

"All of the sudden this massive puma butt comes across my computer screen!" Mr Ordeñana recalled.

At first he could not believe it, but a subsequent photo confirmed that the park had an exciting new resident.

By August, P-22 got his first profile in the LA Times.

The big cat captured the imagination of famed nature photographer Steve Winter, who set up a camera trap beneath the Hollywood Sign. He waited over a year before P-22 sauntered into the frame.

The photo got a spread in National Geographic, and a star was born.

"It gave people hope, because they're living in this big urban area, and they have this park they walk into that was actually wild with a California cougar," Mr Winter said. "He became a celebrity in the city of celebrities."

A decade of P-22 escapades has since ensued. He gave a repairman a fright in 2015 when he hid in a crawl space below a Los Feliz home. He was occasionally spotted on doorbell and park cameras, looking regal, even cute, as he feasted on a deer he'd just slaughtered. The city loved him so much that they forgave him when he (probably) killed a koala at the LA Zoo. Los Angeles has declared 22 October "P-22 Day".

But he also came to symbolise a much darker reality for California's mountain lions.

Local prey - coyotes, raccoons, and other small animals - are also laced with the rat poison that has become ubiquitous around Los Angeles.

In 2014, camera traps spotted P-22 looking ill and officials hauled him in for treatment. A mugshot of P-22 looking grizzled and bemused quickly went viral, but the cause was no joke. He was found to be full of rat poison and consumed by mange - conditions that kill most mountain lions.

The species' habitats have been choked off by California's freeways. Though as many as 6,000 mountain lions live in California, researchers believe the population in the Santa Monica Mountains, where P-22 was probably born, could die out in 50 years as the cats have resorted to inbreeding, weakening their genetic pool.

The great slashes of asphalt also make journeys to new homes potentially deadly. In September, a pregnant mountain lion was struck and killed when she tried to cross a Malibu highway, which bisects a key swathe of habitat. She and her four unborn cubs all had traces of rat poison in their systems.

Once, Mr Ordeñana captured a video of P-22 making plaintive mating calls. They would never be answered; the freeways and development surrounding Griffith Park guaranteed he was walled off from any potential females and would never reproduce.

His presence among the humans who love him brought about his downfall. At the advanced age of 12, he started spending more time acting erratically in the urban areas around the park. Recently, he killed a chihuahua, one of Los Angeles' less endangered but highly protected species. The final straw came after he attacked a resident walking their dog.

When officials cornered him in a backyard on 12 December, P-22 was underweight, full of mange and suffering from an eye injury that likely came from a vehicle collision, said the National Park Services' Jeff Sikich, a biologist who spent more time with P-22 than any other.

It was revealed at a press conference the next day that he was unlikely to be released back into the wild.

As tragic as it has been, his fans say that removing him from Griffith Park and placing him in a sanctuary would be the best-case scenario, and that his legacy as an LA legend is secure.

"He survived out here against all odds," said Ms Mattie, who was inspired to paint a large mural of P-22 and get involved in conservation campaigns. "A lot of people can relate to him. It's not easy, LA will chew you up and spit you out," she said - but he is, for now, still going.