1) if this was a shot of a wild cougar it would be a bit like walking into a fishing competition without a fish and talking about the massive one that got away. You've got a story, you've had an experience and those factors build around the photo itself; but the shot that you got (or in the case of the fish that you didn't get) is lacking when its taken aside and viewed only as a photo itself.
You can't take the experience away and for many wildlife shooters the shot would be a memory keeper of the experience; it would still not make it into nat geo.
At best it would be an environmental shot - one that shows a part of the creature in its habitat (though I'd argue that in this example there is not quite enough habitat to build a story around that). As part of a series depicting and explaining cougars it could work - but again its not nat geo, its not a stunning shot that stands on its own.
This is probably a better similie than my pizza shop. Don't take the mindset of "I did the best I could so that must mean it's ok". Sometimes, especially with wildlife, nature, or anything else outside of our control, the best we can do still sucks. There's nothing wrong with that, but it still sucks. So yes, I think that if the cougar is wearing a pink bow on it's head... it's something you can't control, but it still looks stupid and ABSOLUTELY takes away from the photo.
This happens with landscapes too. I've read many books by professional landscape photographers. They go out, the weather doesn't do what they want, so they don't get any shots. They don't print out the subpar photos that they took and try to sell them saying "I wished it would have done this, but it didn't, so here you go."
Did you do the best you could with what you had? You may very well have. Noones knocking your lack of effort, or at least I'm not. But photos stand alone. They must. We do not judge your photo by the amount of effort you put into it. We judge your photo by what we see inside the frame.
