My mother once told me of the time she shared with other girls living in a house where there were all roomies. All of them were young and inexperienced. They acquired a cat, a ginger tom and took him to the vets to be fixed.

Now imagine this older man trying to explain, in very polite and politically correct terms that the wretched cat was neither one thing, or the other and therefore couldn’t be fixed.  That must have been something else.