A little help for friends in need

The Community Action Team (C.A.T.) is a response to the growing call for help from people in our community who struggle to meet their pet’s needs.

We are here to help pets and their families stay together and nurture the human/animal bond within our community. We provide equal access to pet food and supplies, low-cost preventive care, education, as well as connections to other resources in our community. Our Pet Food Pantry provides free dog and cat food to local pet owners when they need a little extra help caring for their beloved pets. This service is supplied only through donations and is proving essential, now more than ever, due to rising costs and uncertain times.

COMMUNITY ACTION TEAM GOALS:

• Assist our community with compassion and care through our direct services
• Find partners that share our values and our mission to help neighbors in need
• Collaborate with other animal welfare organizations to maximize access to resources
• Nurture the human/animal bond with safety net programs that minimize pet surrenders to local shelters and help pets and their families stay together
• Reduce pet-related barriers that limit access to housing
• Encourage community involvement to help neighbors and their pets
• Provide access to animal welfare education for communities with limited resources

Got Food?

We’ll take it! Bring your donations to either of our shelters during regular business hours. Thank you for being a Humane Hero! Check out more Humane Heroes on our Wall of Love!

Pet Food Donations

• Any brand dry cat and dog food (opened is ok)
• Any brand wet food (unopened cans/containers only please)
• Unopened cat and dog treats

Pet Supply Donations

• Hard rubber activity dog toys (ex. Kong Wobbler, Nylabone)
• Gently used collars and leashes. We do not accept shock, prong, flea, or choke collars.
• Litter scoops
• Cat litter (any brand)
• Cat toys
• Gently used cat & dog beds

Find more donation items on our shelter wishlists!

Learn more about our C.A.T. program in this interview with Community Initiatives Manager Jorge Delgado with Exitos 98.7fm! (Interview in Spanish)

Some things are impossible to quantify. The love we have for our pets, for instance. We can’t imagine our lives without them and we’d do anything to protect and provide for them, through thick and thin. Launched in 2022, our Community Action Team (C.A.T.) is the latest of our evolving safety net programs aimed at helping local pet guardians care for their fuzzy family members when the going gets tough.

Even if we can’t quantify love, we can measure the compassionate impact that our C.A.T. program is making! To identify – and respond to – the growing call for help from folks who struggle to meet their pets’ needs, we are tracking some very significant numbers. Meals are one metric we count – both at our shelter locations and through our mobile distribution efforts.

We’re also tracking – and expanding! – the number of partnerships we’re cultivating to help meet even more of the need. We are proud to be collaborating with many wonderful human service organizations throughout the county, like Redwood Gospel Mission, Los Guillicos Village operated by St. Vincent de Paul Sonoma County, and the monthly Guerneville food pantry – a program of the Salvation Army. And we’re partnering with our friends Compassion Without Borders to bring our mobile pet food pantry to clients accessing their monthly Esperanza Truck clinics.

HSSC Community Initiatives Manager, Jorge Delgado, described a compassionate connection he made at a service site in Cloverdale. “She shared that her husband was not able to work and that her paycheck was being stretched thin,” Jorge says. “She needed food for their dog and cat. Since we were able to provide that, her paycheck can now go a little further covering her family’s other pressing needs.”

Your donations of pet food to our pantry are the key factor in our ability to meet the outpouring of need. You may never meet the person and pet who’ve been helped by your kindness, but it feels so good knowing you’ve helped relieve their worry and helped them feed their beloved dog or cat.  From one pet parent to another, we are lifting each other up and nourishing the need. If you are in need of support or would like to donate some pet food to help out another pet parent, please visit consider donating to our Pet Food Pantry program!