When Your Pet is 'Left Behind'

No, this isn't about some end-of-vacation nightmare with the family dog.

It's about the Rapture -- that is, when Jesus returns in glory in the Second Coming and sweeps all those who are saved up to Heaven, leaving the rest of you -- er, maybe us? -- despairing. Or confounded. Or finally cooking on that awesome backyard grill your Christian neighbor (now happily Raptured) would never let you borrow while he was around.

The theology (eschatology, really) of pre-Tribulation beliefs, or Premillennial Dispensationalism, or Postmillenialism gets as complicated as it sounds. (Or see this graphic if you really want to be confused.)

But what seems clear is that your pets won't be coming along. So what to do?

Well, thank God for atheists.

A particularly enterprising pair of non-believers named Bart and Brad (they don't like to use last names) in June started a business called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets (or "EE-BP" for handy reference). For just $110, and $15 for any additional pet, the group of "dedicated animal lovers, and atheists" pledge to "step in when you step up to Jesus." And they're serious.

"We see this as a win-win for both sides," Bart told me in a telephone call from New Hampshire, where he retired five years ago after a long career as a senior VP at a nationally known retail chain, based in New York. He was cagey about the store's name, too, but as he said, "You've been in my stores a thousand times." And he's right.

Bart said he and his business partner, who lives in Minnesota, were brain-storming ideas as they saw the stock market crash, and presto: "We saw this an opportunity to make some money, and with all the fundamentalists and evangelicals in this country, some of them would like to get some peace of mind...We're dead serious about this thing."

They are also animal lovers. Bart and his wife ("A theist," he says, but they're happily married) have two dogs; the younger one, a six-year-old pit bull "who thinks she's a cocker spaniel," was at the vet for ligament surgery on her right knee as we spoke. (The price tag: $1,200.)

Bart insists that they are keeping the business at a manageable size, with trustworthy reps in 20 states. As the Eternal Earth-Bound Pets Web site says, "Our representatives have been screened to ensure that they are atheists, animal lovers, are moral/ethical with no criminal background, have the ability and desire to rescue your pet and the means to retrieve them and ensure their care for your pet's natural life."

Seems pretty reasonable. As they say, "A small price to pay for your peace of mind and the health and safety of your four-legged friends." Four-legged is a key phrase; they can't handle all species yet -- too bad for your favorite python or goldfish -- and must limit their service to "dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and small caged mammals."

Bart is proprietary about how many customers have signed up -- fewer than 100, is all he'll say. He's mainly had to turn away animal-loving atheists like himself who want to volunteer to care for post-Rapture pets. But he says news of his venture is "going viral."

That such an idea should flourish is not so surprising, really.

The Rapture has been a staple of the American religious imagination since the early 1800s, manifesting itself in great expectations and then "great disappointments" like the one in the 1840s that gave rise to the Seventh-Day Adventists, for example. Televangelists have made a career out of predicting (and then revising as facts on the ground warrant) the dates of the Second Coming -- and the identity of the Anti-Christ -- based on literal readings of the New Testament's apocalyptic Book of Revelation. Hal Lindsey's "Late, Great Planet Earth" exploited the angst of those days to become a bestseller in the 1970s, and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins did much the same with the "Left Behind" series, which rode the widespread Y2K anxiety of the late 1990s to become a publishing phenomenon.

As recently as 2006, according to a Pew Research poll, 79 percent of Christians said they believed in the Second Coming, and 20 percent of them said it would occur in their lifetime. Now whether it occurs within their pets' lifetimes is the question. But that's still a healthy market of more than 40 million folks, and untold numbers of animals.

No surprise that Brad and Bart aren't the first to hook into the possibilities this belief presents.

Last year, a 49-year-old supermarket shelf-stocker from Cape Cod came up with a Web site service called Youvebeenleftbehind.com, which enables believers to store e-mails and documents that will be sent to up to 63 e-mail addresses six days after Jesus returns in glory in the Rapture. That way you can clean up your affairs and let loved ones (unfortunately unsaved) know what happened. In this case, however, the site is run by and for Christians, "to get one last message to the lost at a time when they might just be willing to hear it for the first and last time."

The brilliance of the new atheist-run service is that it combines Americans' powerful belief in a Last Judgment with their equally powerful love of pets. There are now more pets than people in the United States, and we spend more than $40 billion a year on them (while children go without health care, but I digress). More than six in 10 Americans own a dog or cat, or both, and if there is a wrinkle in the EE-BP business plan it's that many pet owners can't imagine the afterlife without Fido or Tabby. Some churches are offering communion for pets (as a way to get owners back in the fold) and some Jews are holding "bark mitzvahs" for their dogs -- albeit largely with tongue in cheek. I mean, how many dogs live to 13? Or is adulthood measured in dog's years?

Even the Humane Society of the United States is into the act, as it recently launched a religion-and-pets Web site. Animal rights crusaders often show more zeal than a tent revivalist. And, just compare the sentences meted out to two NFL bad boys: Star quarterback Michael Vick served 18 months of a 23-month federal prison sentence for dog fighting and received international condemnation. Wide receiver Donte' Stallworth served 24 days of a 30-day sentence for driving drunk and striking and killing a pedestrian and leaving the victim's family devastated.

In any case, the Eternal Earth-Bound Pets business is a nice idea, but of course it is a business, and clients must make a certain leap of faith -- beyond the usual, that is. For one thing, under the Terms and Conditions, there are no refunds if your pet dies before Jesus returns. (If you die, the contract remains valid.) And if you lose your faith "and/or the Rapture occurs and subscriber is not Raptured (aka is "left behind")," then you also lose your money.

On the other hand, Bart and Brad are also making a leap of their own, and say they are prepared to execute the contracts to care for pets should they guess wrong and Jesus does return -- and leave without them.

The other thought that might give Christian pet owners paws, ahem, pause, is that EE-BP is also a subtle way for atheists to do a little proselytizing of their own.

When the popular Christian author and pastor, Tim Stevens, posted about Eternal Earth-Bound Pets on his blog, Bart responded directly to a commenter who questioned how atheists could be trusted to be moral and ethical people if they don't believe in God. "Think more, pray less," he wrote. "And thanks for promoting my rapture site. Business is great. Yours in reason, Bart."

As for me, the service is a moot point. I no longer have a pet -- just a kid -- and as a practicing Catholic, most Rapture scenarios wouldn't include me. (LaHaye and Jenkins had the pope "left behind" in their novels.)

So my interests are best summed up by one of my favorite bumper stickers: "Come the Rapture, can I have your car?"