BENT PASS, Oregon - Rev. Ron Walkins of Bent Pass, Oregon is being asked to step down as pastor of the Bent Pass Church of Love and Light in Jesus Christ Amen due to his growing cat collection. Rev'rend Ron, as he was affectionately called, started with only two female cats when he was hired on as pastor of the L 'n L Church last year, but in the space of that one year, his unspayed cats have had 3 litters of cats between them, and 6 of those cats have had litters, bringing the grand total of cats at the rectory to between 38 and 43, depending on who is counting.
The problem has gotten so out of hand that Church services have to be cut short to allow parishioners time to feed the cats so that they don't beg for food while Rev'rend Ron is giving his sermon. "The caterwauling sometimes got so loud that it drowned out the message," said Janice Sumptin, a regular church goer. In addition, church members found out that more than half of each week's blessings were spent on Tastee Treats and cat litter.
Church members finally got fed up with going into the Chapel and finding cats virtually everywhere using the pews as scratching posts. Said one parishioner "we had to open the doors to the Chapel a good hour or so before services one Sunday when the cats decided to use the potted palms as their own personal litter boxes."
The final straw came when Rev'rend Ron was giving holy communion and a cat jumped out from under the table and clawed its way right up the front of Mabel Harper's dress and pounced from on top of her head into the first pew of worshippers before scrambling out through an open window. Paramedics were called to the scene and Mabel has since been left with both physical and psychological scars due to that incident. She now has to take one or two Xanax before she can even approach the communion table, and blames her anxiety solely on Rev'rend Walkins and his "band of commando cats," as she calls them.
Never one to look at the down side of things, Rev'rend Ron has decided to keep all of his cats and form a new church in the next town over. Church of the Cat-E-Chism and he's careful this time to allow only cat lovers into the fold.
