“I read she passed away. Your plump little neighbor with all the cats.”

“So sad. She tripped on the stairs and broke her neck, poor woman. She lay there, dead, for two weeks before they found her.”

“Poor lady. Poor cats. Alone. Trapped. Starving.”

“Oh, no. Her cats didn’t starve.”

Allen Lang, a recently resurrected member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, was born the year the first Yo Yo factory opened.