Feeding Pets, Supporting Families: How PAWSitive Pantry is Fighting Pet Hunger

What if feeding your pet meant you couldn’t feed yourself? For thousands of struggling families, that’s reality—and it’s driving heartbreaking surrenders. But one organization is changing the game.

In this episode, Amy Castro talks with Stacey LeBaron, founder of PAWSitive Pantry and host of The Community Cats Podcast, about how her team is tackling pet food insecurity—and helping pets stay in the homes where they’re loved.

You’ll hear about:
• A nonprofit that distributes 140,000+ lbs of pet food annually
• How food access prevents shelter surrenders and supports vet care
• The real reasons people give up their pets—and how to stop it
• Starting local: how to create change in your own community
• Practical tips for partnering with shelters, food banks & volunteers

Resources Mentioned:

• PAWSitive Pantry
• Mel Robbins' Let Them Theory
• Pet Food Assistance Directory
• The Community Cats Podcast
• Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society
• Animal Policy Group
• Community Cat Calculator
• Community Cat Pyramid

Listen now and learn how to help pets and families stay together—because no one should have to choose between feeding themselves or feeding their pet.

Quick Update: We’re taking a short break and will be back with a batch of fresh episodes starting August 10! 
In the meantime, binge your way through 100+ past episodes packed with pet-saving sanity—and maybe even solve that one issue that's driving you (and your pet) nuts. 
Catch up, take notes, and we’ll see you soon! 

Chapters

• 0:00 The Reality of Pet Food Insecurity
• 1:57 Meet Stacey LeBaron of Positive Pantry
• 8:53 Origins and Evolution of Positive Pantry
• 17:04 Addressing Financial Barriers for Pet Owners
• 25:48 Distribution Models and Volunteer Network
• 35:34 Success Stories and Community Impact
• 41:00 Starting Your Own Pet Food Pantry
• 44:58 The Community Cats Podcast

Transcript

Amy Castro: 0:31

What if feeding your pet meant skipping meals yourself? Unfortunately, it's a heartbreaking reality for countless pet owners. Yet pet food insecurity is an issue that rarely gets the attention it deserves. Every day, people worldwide make impossible choices Do they pay the rent, do they buy their groceries or do they ensure that their beloved pet doesn't go hungry. But one organization is stepping in to change the game, ensuring that no one has to choose between feeding themselves and feeding their pets. Stick around, because this conversation is going to challenge what you think you know about pet welfare and what it really takes to keep pets and their people together.

Amy Castro: 1:10

Welcome to Muddy Paws and Hairballs, the podcast that cuts through the fluff to talk about real life of pet parents. I'm Amy Castro, and today we're diving into the issue of pet food insecurity, a problem that affects more families than you probably think. My guest today is Stacey LeBaron, a powerhouse in the animal welfare world with more than 30 years of experience tackling cat overpopulation and pet welfare issues. She's the founder and host of the Community Cats podcast, where she has recorded more than 600 episodes interviewing experts from around the world. She's also the president of Positive Pantry, a nonprofit working to ensure pets stay in their homes by providing food to families in need. Today, we're going to talk about the challenges of running a pet food bank and how we can all be part of the solution.

Amy Castro: 1:57

So, stacey, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me, amy, awesome. Well, you're even a more experienced podcaster than I am, so I'm excited to have this conversation. But I know, as we were talking before we started the recording, that I think there's a lot of overlap in our experiences, but you've just kind of like exponentially done things on a bigger scale. So what inspired the Positive Pantry?

Stacy LeBaron: 2:18

It was founded by Jen Bennett around. I don't know if we remember way back when to 2008 and 2009, when we had another financial crisis and people were struggling to make ends meet, housing was an issue A lot of people were underwater on their mortgages and that kind of thing and Jen Bennett, in that period of time, up here in Warren, vermont, we were in a little area called the Mad River Valley, so Sugarbush, mad River Glen ski area, and she started this small group to focus on trying to provide pet food to the families in the Mad River Valley during this very challenging period of time, and so she was the chief canine officer of the Positive Pantry and so they started out with dog food and cat food and they would get a group of volunteers together. They'd break bags down and they had like 10, we call them food shelves in Vermont, so they're small food shelves and they're open like two or three days a week for a couple of hours and they would deliver pet food to these food shelves. So about 10 of them. So very, very small effort and it was very labor intensive. You're buying food, you're breaking it down, you're zipping up, you're doing all the bags and you're labeling the bags dating them, and I moved to Vermont in around 2013. It's about five years later Met up with Pazza Pantry.

Stacy LeBaron: 3:40

At that point in time I had stepped away from the day-to-day animal welfare space and I was taking care of my mom, who had severe dementia at the time. And so I realized, as you know, can't be all things to all people and at that point in time I really needed to make myself available to my mom. But I was like, well, pet food, how hard could that be, you know. And so keep me sort of our board. So I became the chief feline officer and her vice president for several years, and then, about four or five years ago, we flipped, and so she's our vice president and I'm now president of Positive Pantry.

Stacy LeBaron: 4:27

And the big thing that happened for our organization was about eight or nine years ago. We merged well, we collaborate with the Vermont, the Greater Vermont Food Bank. So we now have we're now statewide and we cover the whole state and we help facilitate making connections and supporting the whole state of Vermont. And then, of more recent time, after COVID, we merged with a subcommittee or a pilot group called the Pet Food Task Force, and now we also cover Massachusetts. So the why was. I just felt like it was something for me to be involved with, but I was, like you know, pet food so much easier than the whole animal thing. And then, of course, as with many of us on our journey, it's like, well, this happens, and then this happens, and this happens, and so it grows, and grows, and grows and becomes a great opportunity and it's really, it's a wonderful program. We just love to be able to provide pet food to families in need.

Amy Castro: 5:20

So is it something where you're really seeing these ups and downs based on a direct connection to the economy, or have things been pretty steady, or have they kind of been on the rise? Because I think the whole idea of pet food insecurity is probably not something that a lot of people think about unless they have the issue right Well and it's funny.

Stacy LeBaron: 5:39

So we try to define the issue too. So there's veterinary insecurity and there's pet food insecurity. So most people can't afford a $400 vet bill. So if their cat gets sick or their dog gets injured, runs outside, eats something it shouldn't eat, most people have a really hard time of even affording that veterinary visit, and so we're also great supporters of if you can utilize some of the pet food resources. Please take advantage of that and then put that money aside that you would have paid to buy the food and put your little coffee can I guess we don't do coffee cans anymore, but you know we have your little savings mechanism there to save the money for that vet bill that you may need down the line, because the affordability in veterinary care is just so challenging right now for families also, and so it's trying to utilize multiple levers to be able to put a patchwork together to help families be able to keep their pets, and so if, through taking advantage of some of these opportunities can help save some money for folks to be able to afford the veterinary care that they need for their pets, to you know that all makes sense.

Stacy LeBaron: 6:48

So we're not necessarily super reactive. We're more of a like a steady of supply. However, I will say, during COVID the demands and need went like through the roof, and it was. It was way up there, but then the donations were also way up there too. So and now we've kind of come back down and we're more at a like a pre COVID sort of steady level, and so that's that's been better.

Amy Castro: 7:14

As a president of a nonprofit organization who has to budget, this is more helpful for us and they say they're looking to surrender a pet, my first question is always why, versus saying yes, we can take it, no, we can't, because we do help with medical care, like we had. One of our kind of happiest stories was a situation that was a dog that had happy tail and they kept smashing its tail open and throwing blood all over the house. So it got moved to living outside. But the people couldn't afford the surgery to fix the issue and so they were looking to surrender the dog and we fundraised pretty quickly to raise the money for that surgery. But I've never really thought about asking if we were able to provide this, then how would that help out? But I think it's something for animal welfare organizations and for consumers or pet parents to think about. Don't get so focused on the vet bill. Get focused on where could that money come from otherwise or how can I make up the difference, kind of thing. So that's such a good point.

Stacy LeBaron: 8:24

And some veterinarians will have a payment plan system or an option. But then you say, oh, if I can provide you $100, $200, whatever of pet food and supplies per month, then then you can move that into your payment plan month, then you can move that into your payment plan. And so there are just a lot of different ways to try and help folks be able to make ends meet really, and that's part of what we are all about, and we certainly we focus on the pet food, but, as you've said, we're all connected in this animal welfare space and the more we can collaborate, the better off we're all going to be. And so if I can learn as much as I can about other programs to share with others, I'm going to do that.

Amy Castro: 9:00

Yeah, that's a good point. When people are looking to surrender, the initial contact is always about surrender, not about how can you help me, or can you give me the money to help for this surgery, or can you pay for it, can you offset it, can you help me fundraise? Whatever it might be, and those are usually solutions we have to present. I mean, do you see that people are ashamed, embarrassed, whatever words? You want to fill in the blank, to ask for that help or to come and use the pantry?

Stacy LeBaron: 9:29

even if their pet really needs it Right. The way we work in most cases is we're providing the pet food to a human food shelf, so we're not necessarily touching the people individually unless they contact us via email or we're doing a pop-up. Sometimes we do some pop-up events also and we do fundraisers and outreach, and you know, the people that we deal with at Positive Pantry are already thinking about how can they band-aid the situation together. So luckily we don't get the question of how can I surrender my animal? They're approaching us. How can you help me be able to keep my dog and my cat, even though I've hit upon a hard time and that kind of thing? So luckily we don't have the look of a rescue or a shelter, so that conversation doesn't happen.

Stacy LeBaron: 10:11

I think when the phone calls come to a rescue or a shelter, I think that the biases that's all that they provide are those services, and so I mean I, like you, would do a flip on it and when somebody calls, I would say tell me what's going on in your life and why is this happening, and you know what can we do to partner together to enable you to continue to keep your pet. So it's challenging, though, because I do think that the general public has certain mindset of like I must give it up because I can't afford it, or people think I should be able to do this for my pet and that kind of thing, and I just hope that we can all just open up the conversation and just be open and have just listening. We need to listen a little bit better and I think we'd be much more successful.

Amy Castro: 10:58

Yeah, that's, and that was actually where I was going to go next with this, because you got me thinking about the fact that when you think about and I'm sure you see the same kinds of posts that I see you know somebody goes out to their neighborhood Facebook group or to an animal rescue group or whatever it might be, and they post something about needing to rehome a pet, and immediately there's this backlash of I would never give up my pet, even if I was moving to the moon, I would buy a spaceship for my. I mean, you know, just basically beating that person over the head for considering giving up their pet. And then there's the whole viewpoint of you know, if you can't afford to feed your pet, then you probably shouldn't have one. And that comes from rescue people. It comes from, you know, lay people. What are your thoughts on that subject? The whole financial element when we go out to adopt a pet is something that we think about when we come from rescue, because we want that animal to be able to stay with that person long term.

Stacy LeBaron: 11:51

Oh yeah, and you know it's a very case by case basis with regards to people, some, some folk, their stress levels. So you know, if I was stressed, you know I didn't know where I was going to get food for my family or for my pets. I don't know how I would be. But you know we have supported folks that are living in their cars with their kids and their pets because they don't want to go to a homeless shelter, because they don't want to give up their pets and they can make it work. They make it work and I mean I've had folks deliver pet food to folks in their cars and it's like you know, and the response is, like you know, it's not that bad. So if it's temporary, I guess, if it becomes systemic and maybe you see behavioral issues, anything that's causing harm to the family, you know maybe that's a time to have to make some decisions. But it's about availing people of choices and to have those choices and to feel like there's ongoing support.

Stacy LeBaron: 12:55

The one thing we try to be is very clear with folks that we will support with food for a period of time with individuals, but we won't be lifelong supporters. So folks need to kind of think about what they're gonna do after a six month period of time. Is there another resource? We don't want them to become super dependent on us because we wanna be able to help others, but we also have a desire to not like be like this is going to help you for seven days, because I don't think you can solve an issue that might be happening in your family in seven days. But, like, six months is about our window where we start having conversations at four to five months and saying you know, do you have a plan in place for some more opportunity for your animals? And that kind of thing. Deciding to surrender your pet is a very personal decision and it's one that you and I cannot make for anybody else.

Amy Castro: 13:45

Yeah, that's so true, but yet people like to try to think that they have the right to express that opinion, which is a shame, because what that? I think what that does is it drives people underground. So, ok, fine, I'm going out to this Facebook group, let's say, or whatever social media platform, and I'm asking for help in rehoming my pet, and then I get crucified and so, therefore, I just dump my pet or I take it to a kill shelter or whatever the case may be, because I don't want to face that again. I mean, people aren't going to put their hand on the stove more than once before they learn that lesson, and it's unfortunate that people feel like they need to respond like that. So how does it? What are the logistics of how the pantry works? Like, do people donate money and then you use that to buy pet food? Do you have people that are bringing bags of pet food and I know you kind of talked a little bit about the distribution process, but how does that work?

Stacy LeBaron: 14:36

Yeah. So I will talk about Vermont and I'll talk about Massachusetts, because we're two very different models. So if you are out there and you're interested in starting a pet food pantry, I'm going to share both models so that then you can say oh, I think this would work in my area and this would work in my area. In Vermont we collaborate with the Vermont Food Bank and we have luckily been able to get them connected in with a program through Feeding America, which has had a large grant from PetSmart Charities for pet food, and so they're able to put their name in the hat and ask for large donations through that. That's helped basically fuel their distribution system. So thank you, thank you to PetSmart Charities for making this program happen. It's about 140,000 pounds of pet food has come through them, like in 2024. So we couldn't do what we're doing without that opportunity. We've also had some opportunities through Greater Good. Basically, they enabled us to take in donations to a warehouse that we as a small volunteer-based organization, we just didn't have the capability to do that. So they do all that heavy lifting, literally, of bringing the product in and getting it distributed. I'm also on the board of the Vermont Humane Federation and so many of those animal shelters have pet pantries and we've helped to support them in their needs when they're reaching out to the community with regards to their pet food needs. So we try to make sure we're always filling the gaps too, as well as helping individuals. And then if and local food shelves get their food through the Vermont Food Bank, but if for some reason they run out of food and they're between deliveries or whatever, we'll bridge the gap also on that one too. So we're just always trying to look at different ways of being able to help support. We do fundraising. We fundraise a lot through our website. We have a holiday appeal that we do. We do a lot of grant writing, because I think grant organizations and donor advised funds can understand more of the strategic picture that this is going to cover the whole state. So if there's like a corporation that wants to cover the whole state, we're pretty easy way to cover pet food needs all across the state, because that's our focus In Massachusetts. We do not have like an anchor organization that we collaborate with, so we're a dating service between retailers, food shelves and then with our volunteers. So like we'll have volunteers go to retailers and say you know, can you do a food drive, do you get broken bags and they create these connections and then they'll get that food and then they bring it over to the local food pantry that's willing to include pet food and they bring it over there or they'll do a pop-up in the parking lot of the human food pantry days and they'll provide pet food there. So we're always just trying to kind of that's.

Stacy LeBaron: 17:21

We have to be creative in Massachusetts about. You know how to think outside of the box and then we'll purchase food. Through the grant money that we get and the donations we get. We'll purchase again to bridge the gap and make sure everybody has enough volume. We probably significantly and consistently support about 50 food shelves all across the state. We have about 35 volunteers in Massachusetts and then we also do help with the animal shelters too that have food pantries. So again, you know, and we were like Greenfield College had a, which is a commuter college in western Massachusetts, and they had started a food shelf or food pantry, you know, for human food. But they were getting so many requests for pet food that we've added pet food in there at the school-run food shelf. So we're pretty much anybody who reaches out and asks us, we try to figure something out.

Amy Castro: 18:11

So what do you find? I mean, obviously that's two, like you said, two completely different approaches, but yet they're working. What are the challenges? You know if somebody's sitting out there thinking I could start this on a smaller scale in my community or grow it into a big scale. What are some of the biggest challenges that you face?

Stacy LeBaron: 18:28

We are, at this point in time, quite focused on staying all volunteer run and so I will be honest and say we have wonderful volunteers, we have a great group, but we're very vulnerable on a small handful of people. You know we're dependent on them, which you know. There you are, amy, you're nodding away, which is like we've seen many organizations where you know you've got three to five sort of key players and like if something happened to two of them, you know the organization would be very challenged. And so I mean maybe that's just what presidents are supposed to do, is just worry about that kind of thing all the time. But that's just one thing that I think about is, you know, if something were to happen to the president and the treasurer and you've met some of them online and they're really doing wonderful work but it is a worry for any small nonprofit being so vulnerable because you're such a small group of people.

Stacy LeBaron: 19:23

But if someone was just starting out, I would say stay small. Start small with just one food shelf. Develop your system that way and see what works and what doesn't work, because then you'll get an understanding of what you could then replicate for other food shelves. And in my world I do like the having one representative a volunteer representative for each food shelf. So I do like that model where here in Vermont it's more like they'll email me and we'll facilitate virtually, but to have a designated ambassador or representative for each food shelf, I think makes it feel more local and more community-based and when opportunities become apparent you can take advantage of them locally. I'm not local for most of these places, but there's the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts and lots of opportunities for campaigns and awareness and outreach, and so I do like the model the small is beautiful model of having one person designated in each community. So I would start small, but think about scale when you start small.

Amy Castro: 20:27

Yeah, yeah, you got to have that bigger picture. But I like what you said as far as having that kind of continuity of the representative, because I think that person can also better see the future and see where potential problems, roadblocks or whatever shortfalls, whatever it might be, if they are consistently working with that same group or with that same organization or in that same facility. So that's definitely good advice.

Stacy LeBaron: 20:51

Can I also? I'd just like to also mention quickly too, for folks that are involved in the sort of the senior center council and aging Meals on Wheels space. There's also funding for food for Meals on Wheels, national funding. I did a podcast with the community, kat's podcast with the folks from Meals on Wheels, and so, even if you aren't set up or you don't think that that's something that you can do, you could help facilitate by reaching out to your local Meals on Wheels and introducing them to Morgan, who runs the national group enabling pet food to get through to their clients. So you know, a lot of it can be connections. It doesn't have to revolve around money. A lot of what we've done is connections and opportunities, Like, I say, the dating service between the retailers and the food shelves, and so by listening to this podcast you'll be like, oh, maybe I should talk to my counsel on aging and see if they've connected about the pet food program from Meals on Wheels, which also includes veterinary care too.

Amy Castro: 21:54

That's good to know. I did not know that. I mean, it makes sense. The pet food thing totally makes sense with Meals on Wheels, but it's not something that I would have thought about. Another thing I would add too, just because I know it does exist in our local community around here is coordinating or working with your local, city, county, municipal animal shelter.

Amy Castro: 22:12

Not all of them are going to be open to being involved in something like that, but I do know just one in particular that's local, that actually has a little pet food pantry.

Amy Castro: 22:21

It's somewhat unfortunate because it's for the community and the community is a relatively affluent community. But at the same time, that concept of if there's some space where we could store something on site, or even asking for your local animal control to be a referral source you know, if you were just starting small and maybe you were stockpiling a little of this and a little of that on your own and your local animal control could reach out and say, hey, you know, we had contact with this person who is possibly looking to surrender their pet we couldn't take the pet, but they might need your help and at least making them aware that you're trying to do something you never know what kind of support you might get from that local facility. So, as far as the long-term vision for Positive Pantry, do you see it expanding to more states or just growing within the two states where you've got it? What's on the horizon?

Stacy LeBaron: 23:11

Wow, great question, Amy, and I'd love for you to tell me what's our next step?

Amy Castro: 23:15

Don't tell me Please, I can barely keep up with what I'm doing now, let alone big picture.

Stacy LeBaron: 23:20

I mean honestly, my big picture would be to cover New England. I think the square footage of New England is maybe less than Texas, so we can do things in a regional way, you know, and so I do think that we're close enough together that we could get some pretty significant resources. I know with trucking to the Northeast, sometimes organizations feel like it's not worth it because they're just coming to one place and they're going back. So if I had a regional grouping, you know if they're going to stop in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, you know, maybe that makes it worth the trip. So I think, in terms of getting large scale product into the region, I think having it cover all of New England would be ideal.

Amy Castro: 24:07

Yeah, that would be great. It's funny you talk about the closeness, because Texas it's nothing. I can't leave my house and not drive an hour, let's just put it this way. I mean, I can get to the local grocery store in 12 minutes, but for the most part, you know, everything is about an hour away and so I am moving back to the East Coast, not to New England, but you know, when people talk about being able to traverse the entire state of Delaware in an hour and a half north to south, it's like mind boggling to me, like how much. And I'm from New York originally, so I know that drive from New York to Maine and it's like it's amazing how many states you can pass through in a relatively small amount of time. And I still would have only been north of Dallas. It's all definitely relative. Any success stories that stand out to you? Sometimes, whether it's rescue or whether it's doing what you're doing, there are those incidences that just help you keep going because you see it's worth it.

Stacy LeBaron: 25:00

Yeah, and unfortunately I'm going to have to go back into the COVID era that we're trying not to remember. But I'm going to go back into COVID and this is how we got started in Massachusetts. So they're in Chelsea, massachusetts, which is a little town north of Boston, high population diversity and a lot of population turnover in that community and we had a group I was running a group there that did not get into the pet food space and I always regretted that, and so I was like this is an opportunity to try and start something. And one of the churches, an Episcopal church, st Luke's, reached out to us and they said you know, we'd be happy to take pet food. They'd gone from assisting like 90 families to over 300 families on a weekly basis with food in general human food but they were getting requests for pet food, and so we collaborated with the MSPCA of Boston.

Stacy LeBaron: 25:53

So we heard the story from the pastor there. It was funny because he said they opened up at 10 am on Saturday mornings for their food distribution days and they have a camera outside their door and it's like at like six or seven in the morning in the heat of July anyway, there's like a fold out beach chair there right by the front door, and then there's, like, this older gentleman just sitting there like reading the paper and just doing his thing, but he wanted to be first in line, first in line for this the food pantry and so and this was every saturday, this happened every saturday, but they told us the story so it gets to be 10 am, they open the door and he goes in and he goes straight to the cat food table and it was just for some reason, that simple act of like.

Stacy LeBaron: 26:39

This man was willing to spend three hours every morning waiting in line, so he was the first one to the pet food table because, unfortunately, the pet food table was the first place to have the product go yeah and so he he wanted to make sure he was going to take care of his cats through this whole period of time and that was what was most important to him and it seems it seems like not valuable, but it's incredibly valuable because, you know, here he just loves his cat and he's willing to do this for his cat and I mean, it's one of many stories like that, but that was the one that happened kind of during COVID and I'm like, okay, this is my why. You know what. I'm doing this for him. I'm doing it for this gentleman and all the other people that are out there.

Stacy LeBaron: 27:25

Just this morning, I had another person from Massachusetts who was housebound and she was running out of litter and cat food and dog food and I put together a delivery for her. She was like I can't tell you how much this means to me. You know, so many people turn their back on you and you are just wonderful, and I was like I'm not wonderful, I'm just doing my job, you know. I'm like you know, and it's like there's, as you said earlier, there's no shame in this. There's absolutely no shame in this. We have so much technology, we can figure things out. We have so many more resources, we have delivery services.

Amy Castro: 28:09

We have food shelves, we have mobile, we have shelters. There are just so many delivery systems that I think everybody should be able to access food and potentially some supplies if they need to. Possible pet surrender that you're not seeing. You know what I mean. It's like all the people who are looking out for their pets before they're looking out for themselves, or they do that until they can't do that anymore kind of thing, and it's like you haven't seen the journey that that person has traveled when they get to that point to post on a social media platform or to reach out to a rescue. So how about we take a little step back and be a little less, a little less judgy and a little more helpful when it comes to people trying to do just doing their very best for their pet, and that's what they know to do, yep, for sure?

Stacy LeBaron: 28:48

Yeah, there's a book out, actually by Mel Robbins called Let them. You know, it's very much about sort of being stoic and I feel like I try to do that a lot, which is what is it that I can impact and what can I help to support others? But, as you say, I'm not going to tell somebody what to do. I'm going to provide them education, provide them information. I'm going to provide them my own personal beliefs. I can agree to disagree with anybody any day of the week, but I also will respect them.

Stacy LeBaron: 29:19

I mean, I have difficult conversations, probably on a daily basis, and I'm comfortable with that and I think we should all be comfortable with it. And then we also need to take the time and the space to let it digest and to say did I learn something new today? Or maybe that's not for me and I'm going to go my way. So we have to realize we can control our own words, our own actions, our own physical space. We may not have control over others and I don't think we should ask others that we should have control over them.

Amy Castro: 29:50

I agree. I agree. That's such a good point. So if somebody is listening to this right now and they want to get involved and they want to help, obviously if they're in Vermont or Massachusetts there are options available that might not be available if somebody's somewhere else in the world. So could you kind of hit both of those. Like if somebody was looking to get involved and they lived in the states that you serve, where do they go to get started?

Stacy LeBaron: 30:13

Sure, so obviously, as you just said, in Massachusetts or Vermont, please, please, go to positivepantryorg and it's P-A-W positivepantryorg and we have a nice website there and you can fill out a form for being a volunteer and all that kind of stuff. So we'd love to have volunteers, virtual volunteers, if you want to do anything like social media, grant writing, virtual connections, emailing, checking in with the various food shelves and our collaborative partners. So there are always opportunities for folks that are outside of the region too. We like to be as inclusive as possible. And then also, if you're in other parts and you want to be very hands-on and be distributing food in your own community, which I highly recommend, there are other organizations.

Stacy LeBaron: 30:59

If you just Google pet food pantries in my area, I believe there is actually a pet food pantry directory of some national organizations. It may be linked to the Colorado Pet Food Pantry, which I also look at as a model organization for a statewide initiative for pet food distribution. So Colorado may be a state you want to also take a look at if you're looking at trying to set something up in your own area, and it's definitely check with your local shelter. Oftentimes they'll be like oh yeah, we have, we get pet food, we give it away. And it's like very, all random and like you'd be like, well, you're looking for a coordinator, I could do it. Right, I could, you know, let me see, cause you can do an awful lot with the closet.

Stacy LeBaron: 31:40

You really can do an awful lot with the closet if it's, if it's organized well and it's spaced out right and you communicate it so they may welcome you in to help run a pet food pantry within their own organization. Because it's just, it's one of those things everybody's overwhelmed and it's like, oh gosh, it's another thing I have to deal with, right? But if somebody comes in says, hey, I'd really be interested in taking on this initiative, give me six months. You can fire me after six months if you don't like what's going on. Just give me six months and let's see what happens. And you could really create some serious lemonade with that lemony closet that nobody wants to deal with, and I think it would be a huge benefit to the community with, and I think it would be a huge benefit to the community.

Amy Castro: 32:21

That's such a good point. Yeah, you got me got my wheels spinning. I got to get settled first. When I move, I don't even know where I'm moving yet, but once I get settled I may look for some of those opportunities. Is there anything else that I didn't ask you about that you want to share, about Positive Pantry we?

Stacy LeBaron: 32:33

do outreach with regards to Positive Pantry, and I think it is an important component that, if you are going to be longstanding in the community, that you do have outreach. And I had mentioned a church and I think churches are an incredible resource and I am not particularly religious at all, but I feel like they are a community connection and they are a hub. And again, just to be really, really careful about your words and how you are dealing with your coming into a community with pet food. Just be very respectful of the residents that are there and really try and be careful about how you're presenting yourself and the words that you're using. And anything you say my tip of the week anything you say can and will be put on the front page of a newspaper if we still had paper newspapers, on the front page of a newspaper, if we still had paper newspapers. So just put that in the back of your mind. Is that anything that you say out there can make the public space. And so please, please, just be very courteous and careful with your words.

Amy Castro: 33:31

That's good advice for all of us. We see people left and right getting burned by their words past, past and present. So tell us about the Community Cat podcast, because that's a whole nother initiative that I can't even imagine how busy you are with all the things you've got going.

Stacy LeBaron: 33:46

So in 2016, I started the Community Cats Podcast Again. It was probably another way of me processing my feelings of being away from animal welfare while I was taking care of my mom. My mom passed away in 2019. So I was still in the throes of assisting and caring for my mom, but I also had all these great connections with people in animal welfare, done incredible work with the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society. We created a really a wonderful program to basically reduce our cat overpopulation problem really a wonderful program to basically reduce our cat overpopulation problem, reduce our community cat situation, and I really wanted to share that information with the public.

Stacy LeBaron: 34:33

I had run a mentoring program and I assisted 80 groups on starting trap neuter return programs for community cats. So it's trap neuter return. You get a little ear tip on your ear, so the cats are. You can see from a distance the cats are spayed and neutered or sterilized and vaccinated. So I ran this mentoring program. I had 80 groups that I worked with, but I had 400 groups on my waiting list and that's another thing I'm so proud of is that at any organization I've been involved with, we return phone calls, we respond to emails in as timely a manner as possible. We want to be as responsive and helpful as that we can and I felt it was breaking my heart that these 400 groups had reached out to us and I wasn't able to help them and I was like, okay, let's do a podcast.

Stacy LeBaron: 35:18

Actually, my 13-year-old son at the time, who was learning to play the electric guitar, said mom, you need a podcast. And so he set me up with the recording material and I got together with another colleague that I knew from the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society, kristen Petrie, my technical tabby, who is still with me today, and we started recording in June of 2016. And I loved it. I just I loved it because it's stories. I just want to hear about the stories the positive, the successful stories that we are all dealing with around the world with cats.

Stacy LeBaron: 35:53

Cats are worldwide, we all love cats, we have a bond around cats and I just started doing the podcast in 2016. And here we are in 2025. And we're well over 600 episodes and it's a weekly podcast. It comes out every Tuesday. You can subscribe anywhere. If you're not into the whole podcast subscribing thing, we're also up on YouTube and we also offer 30 online educational events during the course of the year. So we have TNR out of the shadows, bring it forward and say this is what you do when you have cats in the community that need to be spayed or neutered and that need help, and it's a collaborative effort. It's one of the tools in the toolbox to reduce cat overpopulation.

Amy Castro: 37:12

Yeah, and I think it's definitely something. Maybe we need to do a whole other episode on that, because we probably mentioned it, but I've not really done a full episode about the subject, mostly because in our local communities, interestingly enough. So the city of Houston has a, or maybe it's Harris County. I'll clarify that and put that in the show notes, but one or the other major major organization has a TNR program with community cat coordinators and they've got the whole thing going.

Amy Castro: 37:39

But yet a lot of these smaller communities it's basically illegal to, because you're basically releasing an animal to be off leash, so anything that people trap and that they have their local animal control pickup. If it's feral it's going to get euthanized and in three days, so that's. You know it's. It's almost like an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing, like, oh, is it bothering me? Because the cats were climbing on my car, so I had animal control come get it. Surely it got adopted or they did something right by it, and it's like they're not going to tell you yeah, I'm taking this back to euthanize it, but that's basically what happens. So I think that's something that people probably need to educate themselves about a little bit more if they care about the cats that are in their community, but it's a huge problem in Texas for sure.

Stacy LeBaron: 38:22

Well, and even we need to educate ourselves too, and I'm still learning things every day about law. So I teach a community cat program management course at the University of the Pacific. It's an eight-week certification course all about community cat program management. Week certification course, all about community cap program management, and it's really a great program for people who are interested in entering into that field of community cap program management, whether it's leading your own organization or going into a municipal shelter and helping support programming that way.

Stacy LeBaron: 38:48

But things like so say, the state of Texas says trap new to return is legal, which I think might have happened.

Stacy LeBaron: 38:55

Now does that trickle down and supersede the local town ordinances, or do the local town ordinances supersede the state ruling? So I think, keeping an eye on those laws, especially Texas has some incredibly interesting proposed bills coming out. There's a group called Animal Policy Group that tracks all the animal welfare bills all around the country, and so it's a great resource and it's just phenomenal the information that they're able to pull out. So there's like spay-neuter bills, proposed spay-neuter bills for like license plate and for checkoff on the tax return, because we really do have access to care issues. So in the communities where it's illegal to return the cats back, which I always think. We're just borrowing them for 24 hours, exactly, we're just borrowing them, but okay. So then you really need to go after the owned cat community and provide a ton of owned cat spay, neuter and if you're really into the numbers, you can Google community cat calculator and community cat pyramid and you can determine the numbers that you need to reach in your community or to reduce cat overpopulation.

Amy Castro: 40:05

Well, we'll have to check that out. Yeah, you may need to come back and do a whole episode on this subject, because we could talk about this for a long time. And I need to educate myself a little further, because we did do a little TNR through our rescue. It was just one of the services that we provided. The dilemma that we ran into was number one, the legalities, and then it was just seemingly, you know, any person that reached out that was having a problem was not able to do their part in helping with the problem.

Amy Castro: 40:32

So it's like, okay, I can barely get volunteers to come and scoop litter boxes here. I'm not going to get somebody driving an hour away to some neighborhood at six in the morning to pick up a trap and then go stand in line at the SPCA in the hopes that you might get in and get it spayed. I mean, it's just, it's quite an undertaking, but it is doable. It is doable. I think it just needs to be a focus of a particular group, and that's what they do. I think sometimes this idea of trying to be able to provide every service and a rescue, it just it's too much. We'll pay for it If you want to trap it. If you can round it up, if you can take it here, there or anywhere, we'll pay for it. But that's about all we do. We'll even loan you the traps, but we're not going to do the transporting because we just don't have the people power.

Stacy LeBaron: 41:10

And we have to be respectful of that and we have to understand that. I mean I am never going to bottle feed a kitten, I am never going to do that. I thought I mean I already I did the whole, like you know, nursing with my kids and whatever, and I thought it was horrible. I love my children dearly, but that was terrible. I like my sleep and I mean my cats. They disturb my sleep too.

Stacy LeBaron: 41:36

I do not own a cat because I travel all the time now, so I don't even I have a community cat that lives with me a third of the time. In Switzerland we share amongst three families one cat, but I don't have a cat here in Vermont because I travel so much and so, but yet look at what I'm doing for cats. Ok, so it's. You know, everybody has a place and we need to be respectful of that and not expect. You know I can't foster everything, everybody, and if I was had my house full of fosters and the shelter just because of my mentality, I would worry about all the. I was worrying about like 80 cats.

Stacy LeBaron: 42:12

But then I had a friend who had done a ton of trapping in a community and she moved and she had, I don't know, 25 or 30 cats in her house and she was having a hard time financially. I'm like, well, why don't I help her financially? No-transcript. But they are not a place in life to have the cats. But they can become like a godmother is what I used to call myself. I'm a godmother. To that I would call up the vet. I'm so-and-so's godmother. Can I put you know X, y and Z on the account to help cover the cost. So it doesn't mean I don't play a role in this big picture. It's just, it's a different type of relationship.

Amy Castro: 43:02

All right, and I think that's a great note to end on is the idea that for everybody who's listening because one of my biggest frustrations is everybody's got something to say, right, blah, blah, blah. Everybody's going to run their mouth, they're going to make a comment or whatever, and it's like where's your damn check? Send me a freaking check. When was the last time you scoop one of our litter boxes? Be part of the solution in some way. You don't have to be a bottle feeder. It's funny you brought that up because I brought home some bottle babies the other night and I hadn't done them in years but I've done hundreds of, so glad they're gone and because I thought, oh, someday I'll get back into doing that. No, maybe not. Maybe I'll just be writing the check or something. But do something, don't just run your damn mouth.

Amy Castro: 43:43

I think take some kind of action that you can sustain, because I think the other thing that is super helpful to any organization is people who are going to get involved with some level of consistency, not I explode with this energy and then I disappear after a week, kind of thing. So really think about it. And the other thing I would like to say, too, is you know. If you're not going to start your own organization, totally get it. Reach out to your local organizations and see where your skills and your passions and your sustainable effort can go towards helping them, as opposed to being forced into doing something that you don't want to do.

Amy Castro: 44:19

I mean, that's something that I learned. That's how I got so involved in cat rescue, even though we do dogs. It's like I volunteered at my local shelter and I realized the dogs were fun for about one day and then their shit covered feet jumping on me and their long toenails. I'm like, yeah, I'm done with these big dogs. Like no, not doing it. So find your niche and then stay in it and keep contributing. 100% agree with you. Well, stacey, thank you so much for being on the show. I know you're a busy lady and I appreciate you taking the time to be on our little show and I hope to hit 600 episodes. We're just. We just went over 100. I don't know that's a lot of episodes, but we're every Tuesday as well, so we'll never catch up with you, but keep moving forward, keep moving forward.

Stacy LeBaron: 44:56

Congratulations. Most podcasters don't make it past like 20 or 30 episodes or something, so you are a veteran podcaster, so congratulations.

Amy Castro: 45:03

Amy, there we go. Thank you so much and, for everybody who's listening, thank you for listening to another episode of Muddy Paws and Hairballs. Get out there, don't be a mouth. Be somebody that takes action, and we will see you next week. Thanks for listening to Muddy Paws and Hairballs. Be sure to visit our website at muddypawsandhairballscom for more resources and be sure to follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app so you'll never miss a show. And hey, if you like this show, text someone right now and say I've got a podcast recommendation. You need to check the show out and tell them to listen and let you know what they think. Don't forget to tune in next week and every week for a brand new episode. And if you don't do anything else this week, give your pets a big hug from us.