Go, Cougars!

As we learned yesterday, our Roma is about 80 years old in human years, aged and venerable enough to whack anybody who gets in her way with a cane. Yet, even in this wretched heat, she not only keeps on trucking around the Dog Park but actually seems to grow younger instead of older. Yes, she is plagued by arthritis, especially on humid days. And she's got bad teeth and no hearing, but when the young boys enter the picture, Roma becomes quite the vixen. Or, as one Parker called her, a cougar.

She has a special thing for boy dogs named Gus. One is an intact Ridgeback. Another is a Collie—who can tell what he's carrying around under all the fluff? For these and other dogs (including Simon the Scottie, Leroy the Schnauzer, and that cute, new Daschie-boy), our grumpy, old plodder becomes bright-eyed and spry. Her fur goes up, and she wags her tail and does the little hop-around move. Sometimes she even does a chest bump or puts her front paw on the lucky boy's shoulder, the doggy equivalents of "Hey, sailor, got a light?" 

I took my fellow Parker—a man, of course—to task for using the term cougar. "Cougar is a male construct," I harrumphed, drawing on feminist jargon I gleaned from graduate school in the 1980s—yes, when Ronald Reagan was still the POTUS. "There are no male equivalents," I complained. Seriously, what would they be? "Cradle robber?" "Dirty old man?" Even so, they are used ironically, with a wink.  Of course older men want fresh eggs. Who's surprised? But then I thought some more about my reaction. Roma really does get all revved up. She moves instinctively and with more verve than when the food bowl is set before her. How can this be such a bad thing, her tapping into a life force so strong that it turns a creaky, old, fixed dame into a lusty wench. So, feh, I think, tossing my feminist screeds into the "Take to Half Price Books" box. Roma's in the house, and she's got it going on. Call it—and her—what you like. Go, cougars.

-z