Celebration of life for P-22 set for Feb. 4 in Griffith Park

L.A.'s beloved P-22, the legendary mountain lion that roamed the Hollywood Hills for more than a decade, amassing a celebrity-worthy following and inspiring a campaign to save Southern California's threatened pumas, will be remembered at a Feb. 4 memorial in Griffith Park.

P-22 died Dec. 17 after officials "compassionately euthanized" the cougar, finding the big cat had severe health issues and injuries. The mountain lion was thought to be about 12 years old.

The famous cougar will be honored at a Feb. 4 memorial at noon at the park's Greek Theatre. The event requires tickets, but registering is free.

"We will all be grappling with the loss for some time, trying to make sense of a Los Angeles without this magnificent wild creature," the theatre's event page said. "Let’s come together as a community to celebrate his remarkable life."

The event will include speakers, music, dancing and food.

Officials with the National Park Service and the state’s wildlife department decided to capture and evaluate P-22 in early December after he started to show increasing “signs of distress,” including three attacks on dogs in a month and several near-miss encounters with people walking in Los Feliz and Silver Lake.

Health exams revealed that P-22 weighed about 90 pounds, a loss of nearly one-fourth of his usual body weight. He had a skull fracture, an injury to his right eye, herniated organs and a torn diaphragm, injuries likely suffered after being hit by a car. Doctors also discovered P-22 had heart, kidney and liver disease, a thinning coat and a parasitic infection.

P-22 first surprised and delighted Angelenos — and the world — in 2012, when a motion-sensing camera captured an image of his hindquarters and tail in Griffith Park. The adolescent cat had made the improbable trek from his birthplace in the Santa Monica Mountains to the downtown park, journeying across two freeways.

The cougar's popularity only grew through the years after his picture was shown in The Times, National Geographic magazine and in continuing television news coverage over the years. By order of the City Council, every Oct. 22 was celebrated as “P-22 Day.”

More details about the memorial can be found here.

Times staff writers Laura J. Nelson, James Queally and Nathan Solis contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.