Cougars are pretty bad, only a meat shield pet at best if you don't feel like going further for a bird, taur dog(basically bear with different model) or bear. Probably 90 taming to get the young ones pretty easy as far as cougars go though.
Taming has a very odd spot between the 70-80 mark your looking at a big jump between what you can and can't do. Feel like they need to tweek some of the animals to be able to easier tame them at lower levels. Specially with how much time you have to put in to train them to make them worth anything in game instead of just getting killed in two seconds in a fight.