Where the cougars hunt their prey

The real cougar housewives of Bryanston.

It might sound like a spin-off of a popular reality TV series - but yummy mummies remain all the rage.

The Canadian online dating site Cougarlife.com - for single mothers, divorcees and singletons looking for younger men (or "cubs" as they are affectionately known) - has found that Bryanston is the cougar capital of Johannesburg, with three cougars to every cub.

More than 34000 South Africans have signed up for the service since it was launched in November last year, and the majority of them (17800) live in the city of gold.

According to www.urbandictionary.com, a cougar is "anyone, from an overly surgically altered wind tunnel victim, to an absolute sad and bloated old horn-meister, to a real hottie" with a penchant for younger men.

A commercial that was launched on DStv last night features this jingle: "Cougars want to please, we don't like to tease, and we're waiting for you."

A 40-year-old woman from Melville, who wishes to remain anonymous, admits living near a University of Johannesburg residence so she can be supplied with a steady stream of young prey.

"I used to hunt them down, heartlessly."

She claims to have even been smuggled into a varsity residence for a weekend of sex.

But she would discard any young man who got clingy and "send them packing with their half-devoured hearts bleeding in their hands".

As she explained: "Rule number one: Don't fall in love. Sleep with them and leave them."

She added: "When you are an older woman dating a younger man, the paranoia is immense, because you are competing with 20-somethings.

''And its not worth the bruising of your ego in the end."

A 31-year-old man, who lives in Midrand with his 25-year-old girlfriend and their two-year-old son, said he seldom feels guilty about cheating on her with a 41-year-old married woman.

He said sex with a ''sugar mummy'' means nothing to him - all he wants is her generosity.

"I'd meet her at a bar and then we would have sex at her house. She would tell me she was starved of sex, so I was the stand-by."