This cougar, she can have sharp claws, too

“You know,” I said to a colleague recently at the business office at which I carry out my addictions counseling gig, “in all the tramping around I’ve done in the woods, I’ve never seen a cougar.”

“Hmm,” she, an attractive mature woman said, “You just may be talking to one right now.”

“Aha,” I replied (I’m quick on the uptake, I am-I am), “We’re talking about two different orders of cougars, and I must confess I prefer your kind.”

“Oh,” she responded with a laugh, “we can be every bit as lethal, and just might have sharper claws.”

So, nothing amiss here at all. She is happily married, I am happily married and we were just semantically goofing around during a lull period at work.

But, the ‘cougar’ concept is an interesting one. A male-dominated society traditionally held that it was both acceptable, and perhaps even desirable for some old geezer (usually a rich one) to take up with a little love muffin decades younger than he. Even respectable males could get away with this. You know, ditch the ‘old’ wife and acquire an immediate post-pubescent babe. So, you had Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Charlie Chaplin and assorted females barely out of diapers, and even Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and his sometimes pantiless Margaret.

Somehow this all seemed perfectly normal and such men were subjects of even a weird admiration and envy by many of their own sex.

I recall an incident involving a conversation with the second wife of a neighbor of my parents. He was a millionaire; very charming; very dashing; quite handsome (he looked like Larry Tate on the old Bewitched comedy); and he was married to a hottie (oh, she was) who was my age. I was in my mid-20s at the time. He had, by the way, ditched his contemporary wife a few years before.

So, we went to their astonishingly appointed antebellum house (the house was so splendid it was used as the mansion in the film Cousins of a few years ago) for drinkies one time when I was visiting my parents. I was recently married to my first wife.

At one point Darlene (the younger 2nd wife of the rich guy) said: “Now, if you kids would like to do such and such ….” She was, of course, seeing herself as being the same age as her generation older husband, and my parents. Her patronizing comment pissed me off.

“Come off it, Darlene,” I said. “What do you mean ‘you kids’? I happen to know you’re the same age as I am.”

My comment offended her and she walked to the other side of the room. I was, on the other hand, rather proud of myself.

Anyway, back to cougars. A cougar is as follows, according to on Internet definition:

"I have recently encountered the words 'Cougar Women' - a term dreamt up by some male or possibly jealous young female to describe an older woman engaged in a relationship with a younger man. The description 'Cougar Woman' infers a predatory mature woman (35-50+) who hunts, stalks, lusts after and imposes her attentions upon some innocent, inexperienced young male."

That’s right, a reversal of the time-honored. And in that I say, why not? Why should a woman ‘of a certain age’ settle into ‘frumpdom?’ So, the cougar is a predator just like her randy male counterpart and she is attesting: (Older) girls just wanna have fu-un!

Some, of course, even go so far as to marry a younger man. And sometimes those marriages actually work out quite splendidly. Sometimes they don’t. Marriage is a crapshoot at any time, as many of us can attest to.

But, the taboo is still there. There was considerable tumult in the ranks when actress Demi Moore took up with her young bucko. Yet, if the situation had been reversed, such as Harrison Ford with his ‘Stick Insect’ there was scarcely a murmur.

In considering such a societal phenomenon we must be careful to not confuse the Cougar with the MILF. The MILF (and I won’t spell out the acronym for the sake of propriety in my blog, you know, tiny tots and all – are there tiny tots that still know how to read? If they do, they know what MILF means in any case) is younger than the Cougar and often arouses salacious thoughts in contemporaries, older males, and stripling lads. The Cougar, on the other hand is invariably older and in the finest sense should have money and influence.

Her ‘toyboy’, however, is not to be confused with the old fashioned gigolo. Gigolos call the shots and the older woman is at his behest. The Cougar, on the other hand, is very much in charge and knows what she is doing. And, she could just as easily shuck her lad as the gigolo could shuck his older inamorata.

In any case, I quite approve of the switch. I have always found mature women to be attractive as hell -- I mean 'some' mature women, not 'all' -- and in that I concur with Benjamin Franklin who also sang their praises. Something to do with experience, I believe.

But, to end it all, really what I was talking about was the mountain lion type of cougars.