VIRGINIA CITY -- Amy Donovan knew something was wrong last week when her cat, Doc, didn't show up in the morning as usual.

The 17-year-old cat would go out every night, but always came back in the morning. This time Donovan found only a mat of hair just off the back of the deck and only later did she look at it closer to discover it was blood-stained.

"I thought an owl had gotten him because we have big owls around," Donovan said.

Instead, it was a cousin of Doc's -- a mountain lion that had wandered into town on Aug. 12 -- that killed him.

As Donovan looked around in the area behind her house she unknowingly passed within feet of the predator that had killed Doc. The big cat hid in shrubbery next to the old house on Wallace Street that is rented by the county for public offices and was spotted by a county employee with Doc's body.

"I go looking and I was within three feet of the mountain lion," Donovan said. "He had hunkered down with Doc's body in a bush outside of the county attorney's office."

Game wardens with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks were called to Virginia City to handle the mountain lion, a young female. Warden Shane Brozovich shot the cat from a few feet away out a window.

Brozovich said the decision to kill the cat was made to protect public safety.

"There was a large group of people there looking at her and she didn't seem too concerned," he said.

Another mountain lion was reported to have been hanging around a private campground on the east side of town.

And on Tuesday, a young mountain lion that had been hanging around the middle of Ennis had to be killed, said Sam Sheppard, southwest Montana FWP warden captain.

In both instances, the cats were around 2 years old. That's the time when mother mountain lions push them off, Sheppard said.

"It's kind of a point in their life where they have to figure it out or they're not going to make it," he said. "Whether they should be ready or not, they sometimes struggle a little bit and some-times they show up in places where they typically should not be."

Sheppard added that with cats so far into town and showing little fear of humans, FWP's decision to kill the cats is sound.

"We cannot take a chance on something like that," he said. "If a mountain lion is found like it was today, in town within the city of Ennis, we're just going to shoot it.

"We're not going to dart it and try to transport it -- there's too much risk in that."

However, just the sight of a mountain lion near town does not mean that it is causing problems. Sheppard said they've known mountain lions living close to the city limits in Bozeman that hunted deer and never bothered people while raising young.

He stressed that FWP wants to know about mountain lions spotted close to towns, but that it will not automatically kill cats that are staying out of trouble. With mountain foothills and plenty of deer close to many towns, it's not surprising that cats live in close proximity.

For Donovan, the loss of Doc is sad. But she said she's glad to know what happened to him so she didn't spend days searching.

"At least I know he died very fast," she said.