If you are a believer in Tim LaHaye's dispensationalist Bible-prophecy scheme, please note that it is cruel and irresponsible of you to have pets. Someday soon, at any moment, Jesus is coming back to get you before you die. The Rapture will come and in the twinkling of an eye, you'll be gone, leaving your pets alone in the house with no one to feed them or to refill their water bowl.

After you are raptured, in other words, your pets will die.

Slowly. Painfully. Perhaps from dehydration, perhaps -- if you've left the lid up on the toilet bowl -- from starvation. Either way, while you are celebrating with the righteous in heaven, your once-beloved pets will be staggering through your empty home, emaciated and weak from thirst, feebly clawing at the door until finally, exhausted and unable to go on, they collapse. Their dying thoughts will be to wonder what they did that caused you to do this to them.

So please, if you're a Real True Christian and you know that Jesus is going to rapture you any day now, please don't own pets. Or, if you must own them, please talk to one of your evil, reprobate neighbors -- some atheist or Jew or Episcopalian who lives nearby -- and arrange to have them come and care for your pets after the Rapture.