Puma, cougar or jaguar?

Suddenly we bumped into each other. It was great being her friend. We always laughed so much. Today we discussed the latest twist in man-woman relationships — older woman-younger man. Cougars, they call them, I said. She grinned mischievously. No, she said, below 40, they’re called pumas. Forty and above, cougars. Fifty and above, jaguars.

Really? I said. I shall research then write about it. Pumas, cougars, jaguars sound like nothing more than very big wildcats. What is the distinction? I wondered. Do the people who coin these words think that young women are pussycats but when they hit 30 — that’s below 40 — they turn into pumas? 

I went to Google. Pumas are, disappointingly, exactly the same as cougars. You call them either puma or cougar depending on where you are. “But, remember Adidas?” my smart cousin asked. The founder died. His two sons inherited the brand. They did not get along so the only solution was for one to buy out the other. The brother who bought kept the brand Adidas. The other brother manufactured his own brand, which he called Puma.

Maybe if the woman is below 40 she’s called a puma because, well, it is slightly inconsequential. The age gap can’t be all that big. I mean if you’re 25 and you have an affair with an 18-year-old, that’s just seven years. If you’re 35 with a 25-year-old, that’s just 10 years. I thought that was a lot then but apparently now a 10-year age difference is inconsequential.

So I looked at the picture of the puma/cougar. It has a small head and a huge body and it has heavy legs and big paws. When a cougar attacks, she bites you in the spine and that is harmful and painful. Cougars like to hunt for elk, moose, deer, sheep, cattle, horses but they also eat insects and rodents. Cougars are also known as pumas, mountain screamers, or painters. Maybe it’s the mountain screamer that led to the name cougar being used for older women with younger men. Cougars cannot roar like lions but they emit low-pitched hisses, grunts and purrs. They also chirp and whitsle. They are also known for their screams although these screams are often misinterpreted as the calls of other animals — that’s part of what Google says.

Who hunts the cougars and devours them? Wolves! Wolves are metaphors for what? Older, dirty, old men, according to my mother. Animals who hate vampires, I am told at the office. They become werewolves.

But I am most interested in the jaguar because I belong to that age group. The jaguar is the highest rated. It is the third largest and classiest cat after the lion and the tiger. It likes to swim and so it eats fish, turtles and caimans, little animals that look like alligators, in addition to being a carnivore and hunting for meat.

While cougars attack your spine, jaguars attack your head. Their teeth are so sharp they enjoy biting your head, puncturing your skull and wreaking havoc on your brain, which, by the way, is what an older woman my age would like to do to any man of any age that she manages to get her paws on. 

Pumas and cougars come in plain beige while jaguars are essentially beige, too, but they have rosettes, big black and brown spots that are patterned like, well, rosettes. Leopards have spots. They are plainer. Jaguars have rosettes and white fur on their chests lined randomly with black. Also some jaguars are afflicted with a disease called melanism, which means an increased amount of dark pigment on their skin and fur. It is the opposite of albinism, which produces pink albinos. When she has melanism, the polka dot — or is that polka-rosette — jaguar turns into a mean black panther. Did you ever think that the slinky black panther was a jaguar with skin disease?

During estrus, when they desire to breed, female jaguars vocalize more, or they scream more but after she has her cubs she has no more use for her mate and repels him so he leaves to scatter his seed elsewhere.

Pumas, cougars, jaguars, all wildcats, have something sleek and solitary about them. They don’t want to marry but they want to have cubs. After the cubs are born they guard them selfishly and growl if their father comes near. The jaguar particularly was known as a cat with power and strength. Native American cultures called the jaguar the “Lord of the Night,” the formidable god of the underworld, like Hades in Greek mythology.

So why are older women called pumas, cougars, or jaguars? Maybe because they don’t want to keep their male mates. They want their children, yes, so they need the males for a little while, for that pleasure but after the subsequent pain of cub birth, who needs the mates? Me, I am a jaguar. Watch out for me. I am fierce. I will bite your head open and scramble your brains. You will enjoy it while I am around but after I throw you away you are likely to die of sorrow, so you better avoid me, if you care about the quality of the rest of your life.

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