Ghost Cats by Jordan Guevara

There is history along Ventura Boulevard, ghosts. 

The gusts of the Santa Anas blow in from the northwest and cut through what was once the famed El Camino Real trading route. Thick, murderous winds, inciting higher than average temperatures. The dust sweeps through the boulevard, an ancient wind that has serrated the landscape for millennia, endured by the indigenous Tongva tribes and Spanish friars traveling this road.

In the middle of the boulevard is the Los Encinos State Historic Park, just east of Balboa Boulevard. From the street, the park itself is hidden from view, canopied by its namesake live oaks and the low stucco wall along the sidewalk. 

The grounds of the park are unimpressive, enclosed by a perimeter of California live oaks draped above the sidewalk. The rest of the space is open, a field exposed to the triple digit summers, and, as now, the sixty mile per hour Santa Anas. Manicured grass rings the ancient Encino Springs, a naturally carbonated body of water used by the Tongva natives before the Spanish transformed the springs and the land around it for herding and dry farming. The springs now appear flat, a sullen green body of water filtered through the city’s reclamation plant.  The springs are enclosed by a black metal gate. Only ducks and pigeons weave in and out of the bars.

The ancient Tongva, the Spanish colonizers, the Mexican Californios, the American capitalists, made inconsequential by the gas station at the southeast corner of the block, the luxury car dealership next door to the park, and, to the east, stands the 5-story office building where Dad worked as a security guard until he died.

—–

Dad frequently texted me during his shifts in this building beside Los Encinos. He was often bored, especially on the weekends when most of the office spaces were closed. It wasn’t a surprise to receive a text asking me about my thoughts on the Catholic church’s supposed money laundering, or whether I was aware of the CIA’s involvement in the Pinochet dictatorship. Other times were his thoughts on last night’s Dodger game.

Or sometimes he just wanted to ask what I was up to.

I rarely replied.

My excuses were that I was too busy with school, or that I was leery that our conversation would end with him asking me for a few extra bucks. A ride home. If I can ask Mom to call him.

He continued to text me, even if he didn’t expect a reply.

On a Sunday in 2012 during my first year back in college, I drove down from my place at the north end of the Valley to see Dad at work. The semester had just ended, but with it, the days were already laden with the heat of the summer. I pulled up and parked on the street in front of the building; I could already see Dad waving me over in excitement, only his head and arms visible over the concierge desk in the lobby.

You’re early, anak, he says. I don’t get off until noon.

A narrow alley sliced through the office and the parking lot, running east to west. I noticed what looked to be an empty can of food and a small water bowl. I pointed to it, straining to make out what it actually was.

Oh, looks like they already ate their food, Dad said.

He explained how one night, while making his rounds he heard scuffling in the alley, where a pair of moonlit eyes beamed at him from the other end. He recalled his wariness at first, not sure if it was something rabid, dangerous, only to see a flash of muddied black fur as a pair of kittens dashed away. Night after night, he got off the bus a few stops ahead of his own, and walked to the pet store to pick up a few cans of food, even picking out bowls for their food and water. After a few weeks, the kittens had no problem eating the food he left out, yet they were always wary, making themselves present to Dad, if only at a distance. He appreciated the times the kittens had meowed at him, as if greeting him during those graveyard hours. As he told me this he smiled, proud of his role as caretaker, and both of us looked at the place where the empty bowls were left in the persistent shade of that alley.

—–

In the winter of 2012, biologists of the National Park Service captured a young mountain lion on the eastern edge of the Santa Monica mountains. It was the first time mountain lion activity was noted in the region. He was designated as P-22.

This small section of the Santa Monica mountains, just east of the Cahuenga Pass, is heavy with human activity, from the homes in the Hollywood Hills and the tourists visiting the Hollywood sign in the southwest corner, to the over six-thousand-acre swath covered by Griffith Park, the Los Angeles Zoo, and the Forest Lawn cemetery along the northern rim of the area.

While most mountain lions live in the western portion of the Santa Monica mountain range, extending south of the suburbs of Encino all the way to Ventura county, P-22 was suspected of crossing first the 405, then the 101 freeways that cut north-south through the mountains. It was the first account of a mountain lion successfully crossing both of these freeways that see nearly one million cars per day.

P-22 first made headlines in an article in the L.A. Times that same year, but gained national fame a year later in a National Geographic article titled “Ghost Cats,” headlined by photographer Steve Winter, who had spent the year since P-22’s discovery setting up cameras in Griffith Park and its neighboring sprawl.

The image itself was iconic, speaking to the photogenic and often criticized aestheticism that permeates L.A. culture. P-22 was undeniable. A beast against the hollow silhouette of the Hollywood hills behind him, the Hollywood sign itself dim, insignificant in the background. His fur a coat of golden dust. His right paw curled up mid-stride, monstrous, loaded with the kinetic power of his species. His tail is low, cautious and alert. He is illuminated as if by spotlight, as if moving across a stage.

Not only did this image gain P-22 fame, he eventually earned a nickname. The “Hollywood Cat.” For the next decade, his adventures were serialized in the L.A. Times. He eventually earned an exhibit in the Natural History Museum and a documentary was released with the intent of raising awareness for all local wildlife still surviving the L.A. metropolitan area. Late night sightings in the backyards of the mansions on Mulholland Drive became headlines the next morning. The local news provided extensive coverage as local wildlife officers attempted to nudge P-22 out from a crawlspace in another home. In 2016, Los Angeles Zoo staff found the mauled remains of a koala, suspecting the Hollywood Cat of sneaking into the enclosure during the night and having a snack. Murals were dedicated to the lion across the Southland. 

But time passes. P-22 aged, his health declined, and the glamor of residence in the Hills succumbed to the reality of surviving among the sterile, the manicured. Beginning in the spring of 2022, over ten years since his initial discovery, more reports were noted of a wild cat attacking pets in their backyards, preying on unattended chihuahuas and shih tzus. He was noted as a collared mountain lion, P-22 yet no longer the mythical Hollywood Cat.  Researchers monitored his sightings as the aging mountain lion roamed far beyond his territory over the past decade, into the other exclusive areas of Los Feliz and Silver Lake to the north.  By winter, there were six attacks reported in a month. P-22 had attacked and killed a chihuahua while on a walk with its owner. In other reports, he had stalked and attacked dogs and their owners who had tried to intervene. The scientists monitoring P-22 were concerned about his sudden outbursts and violent behavior. Up until now, the reclusive mountain lion had never been known to attack pets and people. They intuited that most likely P-22 was ill, no longer able to successfully hunt his natural prey – deer, rabbits, squirrels- in his habitat, and was now resorting to the easier targets. They finally captured him and brought him in for a health evaluation.

One of the last images captured of P-22 was of him lying on his side upon capture. Here he is small, lying against the green tarp, as if reverting to his infancy, begging to be nuzzled and nursed for a final time. His fur is riddled with parasitic infections, including mange. His coat now the color of drought-stricken earth, cracked and barren, his ribs cresting along the sides like crumbling hillsides. His right eye shut, swollen, bulbous sores peppering around the edges of the socket, scabs deforming his once keen vision of the world. His paws now mangled by arthritis indicative of cats his age, his breathing labored by several organs rapidly failing, including severe kidney damage. His eyes are vacant, hollowed by its own suffering, its inevitable death. It is as if he acknowledges the ultimate cost of survival. 

—–

The last hour of his shift was finally up. Dad checked his phone, checked the time, checked to see if anyone had called him.

Okay, you ready, anak? he asked.

We headed back to the station in the center of the lobby. Dad picked up his bag, rifling through the pockets, his medications rattling, the sound of pages of notebooks and envelopes being flipped through.

What the hell is all that stuff? I asked.

Just my stuff, he replied, fastening the strip of fabric on the worn, faded messenger bag.

I wouldn’t find out until I went through his bag after his death, the names of the medications that kept him alive during these years in the Valley. The notebooks he kept, how it mirrored the way I structured my own notebooks. Vocabulary words to look up later, quotes. His handwriting, a scrawled frantic thing, that looked like mine.

On this Sunday, we were both in the mood for Filipino food, which Dad knew of a buffet north in Panorama City. We got in the car, Dad put his bags in the back seat, the pills rattling softly.

In the passenger seat, Dad took a second to look around at the sun-cracked dashboard, the stained upholstery on the seats, the leather peeling off the stick shift, the plastic on the roof discolored and chipped. The ‘96 Accord that Mom and Dad bought brand new, a flagship of their pride that our family was slowly rising to the middle class.

Jeez, can’t believe you’re still driving this thing. 

I drove east on Ventura Boulevard, then made a left northbound on Van Nuys Boulevard, knowing that Dad always preferred taking Van Nuys when traveling north through the Valley, instead of the adjacent streets like Sepulveda or Balboa. He often commented about Van Nuys’s heyday as we drove past the blocks of car dealerships.

Man, anak, I remember this whole street was just people cruising, he would comment, his gaze wistful.

He recalled screenings at the Capri theater, the neon of the bars and clubs and restaurants stretching into the silhouette of the Santa Susana mountains to the north. Gas stations piled with hot rods, hemis protruding from Chargers like shark fins, filling up for thirty cents a gallon. The air thick with the scent of orange blossoms, the perfume of the girls clinging to their boyfriends, the wisps of marijuana mingling with the Southern California night.

But what Dad saw as we drove north sank him further into a worsening depression. The heat, visible in its outline along the pavement. The buildings, as if the street itself had developed blisters and welts. We passed the shell of the former Dearden’s furniture store, which had begun operating in 1909 and eventually expanded services for check cashing, tax prep, and even credit for undocumented immigrants. The off-colored stucco where the sign used to be, like a secret message decoded, was partly peeling above the graffiti on the walls. The scent of oranges long gone, replaced with the sweaty sheen of people waiting at the bus stop, to which Dad could only tell himself, at least today, that’s not me.

He spoke up, as if continuing a conversation we had paused.

You know, anak, I’ve had to sleep in the building during the weekends. The stupid buses stop running by the time my shift is over. 

As he told me about his bus route, I thought of his legs, tried to calculate the time it took to get to the bus stop, the length of his pauses, the sciatica ripping through his nerves by the time he got to his room. I would later look up the route: from his place he would walk half a mile south to the bus stop, wait for the 167 to pick him up, take him east for where he would need to transfer to the southbound 240, travel for forty minutes south until the bus made a left eastbound on Ventura, until it would drop him off two blocks from where he worked. I wondered, as he made his trek, what people must have seen as they drove by. A man, hunched over, his thinning hair veiled over his worn face, his jacket and jeans sagging over his skeletal frame. My father a visage of the defeated, that heavy burden of life reminiscent of the homeless he encountered, not seen as a man trying to get to work. I quickly scrubbed the thoughts from my mind and simply replied to him with a shrug.

Before I dropped him off at his place, a room in a nondescript single-story home across from a post-war distribution center and bar called El Gallero, he asked, Hey, anak, do you mind if we stop by the pet store first?

For what? I asked, my voice terse, again impatient, always impatient.

I just want to pick up some more food for the strays, he said, already pulling out his wallet from his bag, checking to see how much cash he had on hand.

By the time I dropped him off, the lampposts unfurled a dying tint of yellow on the concrete, the sun overtaken by the deep hues of the evening. I drove away from my father as he clutched the bag of cat food, his silhouette consumed as he walked through the door.

 Jordan Guevara is a native Angeleno, born and raised in Historic Filipinotown. He recently earned his MFA from Antioch University, and his essay “Hieroglyphics” won the Diana Woods Memorial Award with Lunch Ticket. Jordan currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two rescue cats.

4 December 2025