Kitten Reverse-Rapture

Almost no one expects to see people rising into the air today despite one minister’s claims that the Rapture is due – but this being both the purported Rapture day and Armed Forces Day, not to mention this blog’s “Month of Animals,” I am reminded of a story from my own life involving war veteran Kyle Smith and kittens falling from the sky.

It was eighteen shockingly brief years ago (since which time, as this anecdote proves, virtually nothing has changed) that I was in St. Mark’s Comics waiting for Ali Kokmen to arrive so that we could walk to then-new libertarian-pal Chris Whitten’s apartment and lug back to my place a fake suit of medieval armor that I was buying from Chris as a decoration for my apartment (I’ve since moved to the Upper East Side, across from John Jay Park, but the armor is still with me – that my front door faces a park named after a Federalist Papers writer is coincidence).  But the relevant thing is:

While I was waiting for Ali, a panicked nerd came running into the comics shop saying, and I quote, “You gotta let me use your phone to call the cops – some fuck is throwing kittens out the window!”  And indeed some psycho – a psycho with an apartment on St. Mark’s, no less – was doing just that, and the cops were extremely prompt in responding and heading up to arrest the fellow, though I heard witnesses saying one kitten did not survive. 

I immediately called Kyle at the New York Post to tell him of the incident in case he thought it warranted a story and perhaps a Post headline such as “ST. MARK’S SICKO LOBS KITTENS,” and he considered it but was called away to report on Vince McMahon being arrested for steroids.  It’s a complex world.  (Note: Because it was 1993, I called Kyle on a “pay phone,” as in those distant days I did not yet own a cell phone.)

I believe there was a passage in the Book of Daniel that said there shall come a week when Israel is asked to return to its 1967 borders and Todd recounts the day that kittens did fall from the sky, and in that week the Earth shall endeth not, but I don’t claim to be an expert on Scripture. 

P.S. Humans know instinctively that they cannot always get the upper hand against other species.  An acquaintance of mine noted that one of his young sons insists that they deadbolt the door to their apartment every time they come in – because his brother told him a tiger lives in the building’s laundry room.