slang-A woman over the age of 35 who is single or divorced (the more times, the better) who seeks out younger males for sex. Cougars can be tacky women with big hair and loud mouths or they can be graceful and eloquent. Either way, their attraction to younger men is always apparent in their social habits and body language.

Also called the puma, mountain lion, red tiger, deercat, mountain devil, king cat, Mexican lion, panther, mountain screamer, silver lion, catamount, and sneak cat, Felis concolor is found throughout the Americas. It will hunt day or night, in desert, mountain, forest, swamp, prairie, wherever it can find something to catch. Cougars prefer large animals such as deer and elk but will eat anything down to grasshoppers. They kill the larger animals by leaping onto their backs from above and have been documented killing bull elk seven times their own size. (Cougars are generally between 80 and 200 pounds.) They will often bury the prey's carcass and come back to it later, thus keeping scavengers away.

The scientific name, meaning "cat of one color all over," documents that unlike most felines, this cat has fur of one shade, a reddish brown in tropical areas and a more grayish brown in colder climates, though the cubs are often born with spots which fade. They are now most common in the mountains of the western U.S. and Canada, as they were hunted as pests in the more settled areas until the 1960s. Farmers still want them dead as they attack livestock when other food is not available. One subspecies, the Florida panther, may have only 30 to 50 left in the wild in the Everglades, and cougars are now being brought in from other places to breed with captive Florida panthers to try and keep some of the genes alive.

Cougars (the cats, not the big-haired scary women), are solitary animals, and their elusiveness, rather than their considerable skill at hunting, has kept them off the endangered species list thus far. The declining number of cougars in the wild has more to do with loss of habitat than with the efforts of misinformed ranchers to eliminate them. The cougar is an extremely patient hunter, and will stalk prey for hours at a time, waiting for the perfect position from which to attack. Generally, a healthy cougar has an 82% success rate in its attacks, compared to only a 5% success rate for the tiger.

Respect. I got boots older than you, boy,

so don't say the c-word like it's bad.
I know what I'm doing. Do you?
You say you want some sweet young
thing, her head full of fluffy-dovey love,
soft and forgiving, naive. No rough life
led, no diamond-hard eyes watching
you work. Rosebud beauty just lies 
there and sweats while you wish
for a lover who'll bend your pride
to her knee, thrill you and show
you everything they can't capture
on glossy paper or film or magnetic
tape. You can't do better than your own
imagination if your friends all have staples.
My flesh is real, but it's my mind
you want, even if you don't know it yet.

Respect. I got scars older than you, boy.

Wanna see?

Cou"gar (k??"g?r), n. [F. couguar, from the native name in the South American dialects, cuguacuara, cuguacuarana.] Zool.



© Webster 1913.

Log in or registerto write something here or to contact authors.