It’s a really nice idea for areas with many Federal employees.

how many will be turned over to shelters because their owners can't afford to feed them. It breaks your heart.

kindness!

I do most of my shopping on foot or using transit.

I hate these fuckers, SO MUCH.

The shutdown was not mentioned by the rescue but we were thinking that there are going to be a lot of animals in need as well as people. I asked a family MAGA who always attends church if his church was collecting food donations to help people get through this. He looked at me like I had three eyes and after a long pause he said "no". I said I would have bought some food for him to take but that's okay because I will take it to a weekly protest location that has an ongoing food drive. I guess his evangelical Baptist church isn't about feeding the poor.

Rescues are really hurting right now.

Amazing as to how far removed from reality many of these MAGA church goers are, isn't it?

Yup, a lot of the MAGA churches want the money put in their coffers instead of having it spent on helping the poor.

Do food banks accept/need pet food? If so, is it better to buy the food yourself or give them money?

is a food bank. My vet will bring loads of donated materials to them to distribute. People in need in this area know where to go.

Thanks for letting us know about this.

Appreciate getting donations of pet food. If you’ve ever paid any attention to homeless people, they often have pets. A bag or two of food would be most welcome indeed. If you can afford a big bag, maybe take a few ziploc bags so the contents can be divvied up to help several people who have pets.

Also think about buying feminine hygiene products to drop off at shelters who assist women and teen girls.

This is the time when many people need help. Seems to me ANYTHING will help. ANYTHING will make a difference. Money or food or clothing. Winter’s coming. There is much need.

yes indeed

God bless you Mossfern

who deserves the praises - I'm just spreading the word and buying some extra pet food and supplies.
I lost one of my cats recently (RIP Gus ), I'll be sure to donate whatever he would have eaten/used for at least a month.
Hopefully this won't last that long.

My daughter's a Federal employee on furlough - she's not getting paid but still has to work.

Things really are that tough for so many.

of the Republican Senate and House and USSC justices are just beginning, as many on here have forecast......

Things will start cascading down through the citizens like dominoes or a house of cards......

Hang in there, help who ever you can, and get ready for an accelerating downfall of the entire U.S.

The only MAGAots I have sympathy for are their children, their parents?..... I feel like saying: You Grew It, You Chew It....crunch, crunch, crunch.....
Especially when they continue to swallow of the Republicans BS that is because of Biden, Hillary, Obama, and even Carter...

We encourage larger bags that we can break up. More cost effective. But anything helps. There are a lot of food insecure pets out there. We run out quickly, even after large donations.

Also, your town may have a pet food bank, like The Pongo Fund in Portland. In this case, cash donations are king.

have banded together to collect donations of toiletries, pet food and supplies and, of course food for families.
My synagogue is involved in a program that provides dinners for people who have food insecurities. One day every week each house of worship provide 50 dinners that are supplied locally. We were considering increasing that because of the cut of SNAP, but SNAP families need groceries for families, not a single dinner. The needs are varied and increasing.

It's up to us to help our neighbors in these times.
Shame on all republicans - especially those who claim to be Christian.

If there was a legitimate crisis, responsible politicians would look before they act.
This is swashbuckling by Trump ignoring the consequences

The rescue group that I work with is in desperate need of kitten food. We have a TON of kittens, and the season isn't ending. I would suggest getting a number of small bags of kibble, or a couple of cases of wet food. They can break them up as needed.

Thank you for doing this, from Daenerys and Snickers (our two foster kittens) and our 3 resident cats.

A local pet store was having a buy one 5 pound bag of dog food and get the second one
for free promotion so I bought $100 worth of dog food and gave it to the Clintonville
Resource Center in Columbus, Ohio. I did that after reading about people are looking @
giving up their pets because of the cuts.

Especially the heavy boxes of cat litter. Use places like Amazon or Walmart.

Filled with small snacks like protein bars and nuts. He includes things like a pair of socks or toiletries. Sometimes he puts some change or a few dollars inside. As he drives to work, if he encounters someone asking for a handout, he gives them one of his give away bags. He restocks with a trip to Dollar Tree or warehouse stores like Sam’s Club. There are plenty of ways to show compassion and offer help that are easy to buy and pack up in ziploc bags.

Vienna Sausages and tuna packs are small and can be a quick snack or small meal. Options are endless once you start looking and thinking about it.

but love that they're doing this. People need help, and so do their fur babies.

the shelters fill up and people also dump their pets in
rural areas.

My youngest step-child (40) gets no alimony or child support from her ex, nor any from her soon-to-be ex, and is raising 3 absolutely superlative teenage daughters on her own. Her SNAP benefits have gone the way of everyone else's, and her former paycheque was federal, so....

She is somehow hanging on, despite having to migrate to a $9 per hour job. Fortunately, they are in no danger of being evicted, because she has understanding landlords; in better times, I was able to buy the house they are currently in. Sadly, those days are in the rear-view, due to pensions totalling measurably less than $20K and several years of smoothing over the deficit with savings.

I don't know about you, but my savings are pretty finite. Still, as I tell my wife, and sometimes others, we are FINE. We live indoors and eat every day. Life could be a whole lot worse, at least for us.

Long time lurking, first post.... . For almost the last 10 years, my wife has been running a Pet Food Pantry out of one side of our garage. She has a history in Pet Rescue, but this was her true calling. Initially it was a single shelving unit, half full of mismatched dog and cat food, then another shelving unit was needed, and then a couple of Rubbermaid tubs, and grew to take over the entire garage stall. She has been featured in newspaper stories, interviewed by Boston area radio stations, and once even did an interview on Fox News about supply chain challenges. Never look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to getting your non-profit's message out. The South Shore Pet Food Pantry, a legit non-profit, at its peak, provided about 750 families a month with supplemental cat and dog food. One of the biggest drivers of animals into shelters is owners cannot pay the food costs. She discovered that many at food banks were taking as much chicken and rice as they could, but not just for themselves. She also knew that shelters around the area were getting large corporate donations, from Chewy or Amazon or the like, of cat and dog food, more than the animals in their care could consume or the shelter could disperse before the food expired. She networked to get the excess food from the shelters to our garage, volunteers would pickup the food here, take it home, portion out the dry food into sealed zipper bags, and then bring the bags of food back, with portion bags inside. My daughters spent countless hours in the garage putting together bundles of dry food bags , canned food, and treats, if we had them, into disposable shopping bags. We got most of the shopping bags for free from our local Home Depot who would have otherwise thrown them out. These shopping bags (had to do it this way during Covid and it became the standard) were then put into the hands of the pet owners at food banks. We have three patio boxes in our driveway with the constant churn of volunteers picking up bags of dry food to take home, portion out, and then return to us in sealed bags.
Sadly, that all stops at the end of the year. There is no more money to buy food, there are less and less volunteers willing or able to package or distribute food, and the shelves are getting bare with no new deliveries in sight. In case you are wondering, no one has ever got a paycheck from the SSPFP, no one was reimbursed for storage, or mileage to pickup or deliver food. It was and still is a benevolent endeavor, but one that she simply cannot do anymore. Donations have stopped, volunteers have other priorities, and it cannot be on one person to lift the load that 10 or more carried just a few months ago. It is just the time we live in now,

I know how much effort goes into what she is doing. About 15yrs ago I volunteered on Sundays with a woman here in SoCal who had a similar program. She was a dynamo. I went with her a few times in her small box truck to places like big box stores or grocery stores, and picked up palettes of bags of pet food that were either expired or 'broken bags'*. Took them back to her garage to be picked up by local rescues or be delivered to them. Some times she'd get palettes that had other products for humans on them, which she'd deliver with the animal food. So if we went to deliver food to a shelter, she'd give the workers items they might be able to use. Even went to food banks to get food for the shelter/rescue workers. After some time I had to stop volunteering with her as I was working full time and had to start caring for an aging family member. Last I heard she was still going and had actually found space in a warehouse so she could expand her project.

There are people like your wife and her volunteers out there that work unbeknownst to the public helping out so many who need items for their animals. I can't thank her/you/them enough for what they do.

*broken bags are dry food bags that get ripped open or damaged and can't be sold. I don't know if stores still do this, but it might be a source of food for anyone needing food for their pets or colony cats etc.

put out this blast email.

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