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I went to 1/5 Nuevo for a nightcap with a friend recently, and we found ourselves in the midst of a Girls Gone Wild hen’s night with a gang of flashy, fleshy girls dancing to Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun. We hugged the bar seeking safety from the dancing queens, and as the music played we drank and smoked roll-ups, watching them pass around the tiara. Finally the bar stool next to me opened up and I didn’t hesitate. Minutes later, I received a forceful tug at my side. “You're sitting in my chair,” a smoke-choked voice said. I turned to see a woman well into her fifties but trying to look 40 with waist-length platinum hair, a Florida orange tan, doctored breasts/nose/lips and stern eyes. In short, a poor man’s Donatella Versace. “I’m sorry. Thought you've left,” I said looking around at the other empty bar stools. This chair was precious to her, it seemed. I vacated but stood very close by. She slowly sucked back her cigarettes and wine, and straightened with excitement every time a man entered, sinking back into her chair when he greeted his date. She wasn’t waiting for anyone, just The One. 

“That’s a cougar,” my friend tells me as we exit onto Star Street. The term was no doubt invented by college boys but is now the accepted term for older women on the hunt for boys decades their junior.

Years ago, during my internship at a weekly news magazine in the US, I opened hate mail for one of the magazine’s editors, who was a known ultra-cougar. She worked until midnight most nights then headed to a well-known banker’s hangout. She had a hair budget and a private dietitian. She was at the top of her game, professionally, but her life consisted of no carbs, pills, hate mail, and instant gratification from flirtatious instant messaging. I once envied her, or the idea of her at least. But I never wanted to be her. I don't think she even wants to be her, but life happens.

I went looking for her equivalent when I started cougar-hunting in Hong Kong. I brought my cougar-baits with me (a rotation of young, attractive twenty-somethings) and went to their known hunting grounds: DiVino at happy hour, Kee Club on Fridays, M1NT Club on Saturdays, Mes Amis on ladies’ night, Dragon-i on any night but Brazilian model night, and various hotel bars to round out the week. But I saw a lot more older gentlemen partying with what looked like their nieces than aggressive women looking for boy-toys. In fact, cougars were proving to be more difficult to track than a snow leopard. But once we found one, we found the pack.

My observations told me cougars are of two minds when it comes to their younger rivals: hate them or use them. Haters will gracefully attack cubs with their death stares and polite insults as soon as they enter their den; users surround themselves with giggling young cubs so they can meet their friends. I invited one of the latter types to Goccia and politely accused her of being a cougar. She’s forty-something (though she tells people she’s 39) and is currently dating a 23-year-old Swedish man in the shipping business. “What's the youngest you’ve had?" I asked. “It’s not a matter of age…” she began. “Ok, when I was in law school, he wasn't even born yet.” She asked me how old I would go. “I was 20 and he was 41,” I said, already anticipating her response. "Typical," she said. 

A male friend called to find out how the cougar story was going. What he said shocked me: “You could be a cougar.” “What?”" I said louder than I intended to inside the new upscale Viet eatery Le Soleil. “Yeah, if you dated someone who was 19.” Oh god, I thought, I could easily be one in ten years time. I stopped eating my lemongrass lamb curry half-wondering if red meat would age me.

In a city like Hong Kong it is very easy to delay growing up. My thirties have so far been just like my twenties with a larger bank account. If I continue like this I could easily go from hunted to hunter. That’s when I started to understand the cougar.

The thing about cougars is they are smart women who‘ve marched down a straight line, taken care of themselves, financially and emotionally, and are the definition of independence –  all things I see myself and my friends doing, believing this is the higher plane. Realising that, I suddenly felt compassion for cougars. It seemed I wasn’t the only one.

“I like a woman who is not wrecked with insecurities and who knows exactly what she wants,” said one of my cougar-baits a week after our outing. “You got cougared didn’t you?” I asked. “Absolutely,” he replied happily.