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On more than one occasion, I have watched my mother regale the room with a truly awful story involving a family cat and its botched pregnancy. I won’t belabor the details—trust me, you don’t want to hear them—but, basically, when I was young, a cat we owned that had been previously spayed somehow became fecund with a litter of kittens. This required veterinary intervention, since the cat no longer possessed the biological ability to bear its offspring. She survived the emergency C-section, but, one by one, the way-too-premature babies died. It is a hilariously macabre tale, with no real punch line, irony, or lessons to be derived. But nevertheless, in the early sta

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