Update: Reasons Why a Pittsburgh Pet Food Pantry is Closing Temporarily

As we announced, the Dr. John P. Ruffing VMD Pet Food Pantry has to close for September because of a lack of donations. I didn’t really get much feedback. Chalked that up to there being so much wrong in the world, so much bad news that this was just more. Did I expect the calvary […]

Reasons Why a Pittsburgh Pet Food Pantry is Closing Temporarily

PET FOOD PANTRY temporarily closed due to lack of donations. We are sorry to inform our neighbors that the Dr. John P. Ruffing VMD Pet Food Pantry will not be distributing in September due to lack of pet food. The pantry has over 70 registered households and caretakers. Based on Pittsburgh’s Northside, they serve families […]

Crisis alert: The Dr. John P. Ruffing VMD Pet Food Pantry faces dwindling inventory, fewer donations, and more households registering

Things are dire with the Dr. John P. Ruffing VMD Pet Food Pantry. I’m out of ideas. We can’t get the shed up. To get started, here’s a sweet video clip of two bonded cats born outside separately in 2019. They’ve lived here ever since. Spencer Cassadine is on the left, Kinzua on the right. […]

Contributing to This Cat Vet Visit Will Help Us Develop a New Pet Food Project

I developed a theory over 30 years ago while working in social service ministry in Western Kentucky – if we could find ways to help folx out with small problems, we’d avoid a lot of bigger problems. I saw this play out nearly daily in the rural community with no traffic lights and nearly 100 […]

Never Any Extra Food, Never Enough Food – When the Pet Food Pantry Says No

kitchen shelves with bgs and cartos of cat food

The Dr. John P. Ruffing VMD Pet Food Pantry team spent the weekend packing up non-food donations like beds, trees, bowls, towels, blankets, and so forth. That’s when we realized something problematic – we are going to run out of food at the end of May. We know you came through for us in February […]

How a Community Pet Food Pantry in Pittsburgh Joined the Resistance

We don’t know what lies ahead. We won’t give you platitudes about resiliency or inner strength or toughness even though we think those are true. What we can give you is reassurance that you are not alone. The Dr. John P. Ruffing VMD Pet Food Pantry supports neighbors taking care of animals – community cats, […]

Update on Winter Pet Food Drive – After the Reindeer Are Fed, Remember the Cats and Dogs

We urgently need dry dog and cat food The Winter Holiday Pet Food Drive is underway. We are supporting the striking pet owners of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh along with our colony caretakers and modest income pet owners. Scroll down for donation information. We have 68 households registered caring for over 700 animals. Each […]

This is My Appeal Post

This is the post where I confuse you with my various appeals. On a personal note, I still have a GoFundMe to help with my ongoing legal expenses and my personal expenses. Quite a bit of my great reduced income goes to this blog. Income from advertising is limited and scratches only the surface. I […]

My best friend Dr. John Ruffing died 17 years ago. His legacy is now a pet food pantry.

Dr. Ruffing Pet Food Pantry

All week, I’ve been loading donations for The Dr. John P. Ruffing VMD Pet Food Pantry into my borrowed Land Rover that we’ve dubbed St. Gertrude or Gertie. She contains multitudes of cat food. Now,there’s no interior light so I bought a head lamp. I added a USB port to the cigarette light – oh […]

The Reason My Cats Think I’m Horrible

Our second month of pet food distribution is underway. We have 50 total colony caretakers registered and 26 are active. All feed cats, some have dogs. Our main focus is dry cat food, especially during these winter months.  We’ll need bags of food in the 10-20 pound range. Smaller bags can be combined as well. […]