The Pongo Fund Pet Food Bank

When the stomach hurts so much that a bowl of hope is more important than a bowl of food. What then? When the hunger is greater than what a bag of kibble can fix. How do we help then? Because going to the store and buying a bag of hope just isn’t an easy thing to do.

Caring and nurturing and loving and doing every single thing possible and still it’s not enough. Because sometimes there just isn’t an easy answer. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

When she said she needed food, that sentence alone, was a good thing. Because The Pongo Fund has food. But the other words were less good. Because those words shared both a broken heart and a broken spirit.

And those words alone, singularly and together, told us this is a desperate situation that kibble alone may not fix. Another strong and fierce senior that has outlived her family and now she is all that’s left of a once full family tree.

And that’s what hurt so bad. Because this Mom who had outlived her own two-legged children was still Mom to her four-legged ones. And she was willing to do whatever she could to help them.

The food she requested was a Hail Mary. Because her cat had stopped eating a few days ago. And more food wasn’t necessarily the answer. Because this kitty friend had received the best veterinary care possible, and there may be something more involved.

But someone had said something to someone and then to someone else and then to her and there she was, hopeful that we had the magic bag of food that would be just the thing to get her cat eating again. Giving her hope that we had something that no one else had.

Yet of course she knew that was likely not going to be the case. But hope was still there. And so were we.

We offered everything we could. Even things we weren’t sure we could do. Because we knew we’d find a way.

And that’s the honor of being part of our Emergency Kibble Response Team. Because we’re still going to do what we can when we can. Just because we can’t buy a bag of hope doesn’t mean we can’t deliver it. Even if we have to make our own. Even if it may not be enough.

And that’s how we ended up in the doorway of a hurting yet proud octogenarian and presented her with a smorgasbord of cat food that numbered more than 20 different samples. Wet food and dry food and homemade food and baby food and more. Fresh blankets and bedding too. And fluffers and feathers and catnip thingys too. And a quaint old book filled with cat stories that we knew they could read together.

With a promise that we’d be back again and again and again to bring more of whatever is needed as long as it’s needed. Because that’s what we do when we deliver hope. We don’t stop.

Bringing hope. And this is why we Pongo.

Sit. Stay. Eat. Live.  thepongofund.org