SPCA’s Pet Meals program helping seniors keep their pets

Chiquita and Gus live the good life. All day they eat, sleep, and get constant love from their owner Patricia Klem.

“They sleep with me. They’re really comforting, I love them. They are family,” said Klem.

Klem and her four-legged friends benefit from the Meals On Wheels of the Salinas Valley program. Every week a volunteer delivers food to her Greenfield home, and with help from the SPCA of Monterey County Chiquita and Gus get fed too. All too often pet owners sacrifice their own needs to care for the four-legged family members they love.

April King with the SPCA said, “Either they were giving their own food they really needed to their pets in order to keep them healthy or they were bringing them to us in tears surrendering them because there was no way they could get out to the store to get their food for their pets.”

Volunteers with the SPCA prepare food for pets as far north as Prunedale and as far south as King City. But it doesn’t stop there. The SPCA also provides cat litter, bird seed, anything a pet owner would need to keep their pets happy and healthy – and it’s all made possible through support from the community.

Klem said, “They’re just great to have. I don’t know what I would do without them.”

The SPCA’s Pet Meals Program is always looking for volunteers to help label and prepare the pet food for delivery.

To help the great work done by the folks at the SPCA, remember to watch the 14th Annual Pet Telethon live on Saturday from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on KION News Channel 5.