When the roll is called up yonder, an unusual business volunteers to watch the pets
by Walter Jowers
Well, it's about dang time metaphysically minded entrepreneurs got busy putting the country's economy back on track. According to the Feb. 11 edition of Business Week, Bart Centre, a 61-year-old retiree in New Hampshire, might have found himself a way to make a buck off the Rapture.
Yep, I said Rapture. You know, the long-awaited — very, very, very long-awaited — event in which our Maker emerges from the clouds conducting the Holy Horns, throwing down heavenly signs and rounding up his saints in that great gettin'-up morning one of these days. If I recall my one-and-only Sunday School lesson correctly, the shindig also includes the dead-but-righteous flying up to Heaven first-class, while the earthbound atheists wait for the wars, famine, pestilence, etc., that will surely follow.
If some fire-breathing preachers back home in South Carolina can be believed, when Rapture day finally comes, all the once-righteous dead folks — or is it once-dead righteous folks? — will shoot up out of the ground like Atlas missiles flying out of their silos. You don't want to get caught standing in a graveyard when the chariot swings low.
Anyway, Centre recently started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets. The service promises to rescue and care for animals that will be trapped on earth with the atheists and blasphemers on Rapture day. Dogs, cats, ferrets, chimps and the like will have to spend their remaining time on earth with atheists, seeing as how their righteous previous owners have done up and gone.
Centre — thank heaven — has a plan: His cadre of about 100 clients will pay $110 for a 10-year contract. If the righteous are raptured out before their contracts run out, a group of godless folk will carry out the mission. "If you love your pets," says Centre, "I can't understand how you could not consider this."
Centre freely admits that he's "trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement [his] income."
Let me suggest this: Make me the treasurer for Eternal Earth-Bound Pets. I'll watch every penny. Really. Just look me up on Rapture day. Check the righteous and hellbound enclaves, because I'm kind of a fence sitter.
Todd Strandberg, who operates a website called raptureready.com, gets 250,000 unique visitors every month. He believes that earthly animals — however devout — aren't going to get a ride up to heaven. "Pets don't have souls," he says, "so they'll remain on earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you."
Not to argue with Mr. Strandberg, but maybe it all depends on the fight in the dog, so to speak. As Wallace Willis, the writer of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" wrote: "If I get there before you do, I'll cut a hole and pull you through."
Some of you readers know that my faithful and beloved dogfriend Rufus passed away back in January, breaking my heart and giving me a strong craving for antidepressants. If I'd known about Centre's scheme a few weeks ago, I would have cheerfully thrown down $110 and posed as an atheist on Rapture day, if that would've meant getting my sweet old dog back.
You unbelievers, listen to me: I'll bet any of you right now that dogs go to heaven. Some years ago, an ABC/Beliefnet poll concluded that about half the people interviewed believe pets go to heaven. The poll also concluded that people living in the Northeast are more likely to think heaven has pets. Maybe it's just me, but I refuse to concede that God favors Yankee dogs. I checked with one of my Yankee friends, Genius Pete, up in New Jersey, and he said he believes that there are dogs in heaven, even Southern dogs. Then he offered this, which he heard from the lips of a 5-year-old: "Bad cats go to dog heaven."
Well, there you go. Straight from the mind of an innocent child. Good dogs go to dog heaven, where they chase bad cats.
But I digress ...
Centre has a dilemma. He has to make the folks he calls "the Rapture crowd" think that his pet rescuers are genuine unbelievers, but are righteous enough to take care of the pets who'll be left behind when Gabriel blows his horn. "We want people who have pets and are animal lovers. They take this very seriously," Centre says. One rescuer, Laura, has two dogs of her own, but she's committed to rescue four dogs and two cats when and if the Rapture comes. "If it happens," Laura says, "my first thought will be, 'I've got work to do!' "
Comments (1)
Showing 1-1 of 1
When I read about this plan for post-rapture pet care a few months ago, I began to wonder: what if the contract were not carried out? Who would enforce it, assuming that the pet owner is no longer on earth? In the case of pet care, or for that matter, any other raptured person's property, would one ask the court to create a decedent's estate, or an absentee estate? After all, the raptured person has not died.
like
dislike
