Looking out my Backdoor: 'I couldn't sleep a wink last night'

“I couldn’t sleep a wink last night,” it’s true. It’s silly to be lovelorn and at my age too.

Oh, no. Don’t get excited. It’s not what you think. More’s the pity.

I swear, I can hardly believe myself. An animal. A dumb animal. Well, not so dumb, it turns out. Saturday, the chosen day, finally arrived — Cat Ballou took an anticipated trip to the veterinarian for the essential surgery, the one to prevent an unending series of duplicates.

Surgery went well. Ballou returned home comatose with a plastic halo around her neck. Within a couple hours after she woke up, grogg...