AUBURN - When a man came to Mary Lou McQuaid's home explaining that he had just split his last can of dog food with his pet, it nearly broke her heart.

“I told him, ‘You can't eat dog food, it's not healthy,' and he goes, ‘Look, when you're hungry, you'll eat anything,” McQuaid, the secretary of the Pet Food Pantry, said. “My heart broke and next thing you know I'm running into the pantry to get him his dog food and a volunteer says, ‘Don't you have something from your dinner table?' I went to the freezer and took some stuff out. He left with food for himself and for his dog.”

While the Pet Food Pantry tries to meet the needs of the pet community, fewer donations than usual have forced it to cancel give-away days and turn away many pet owners with nothing, McQuaid said.

In order to help the struggling organization, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Auburn held an “Animals Matter” fundraiser Saturday that included a bake sale, silent auction and a rummage sale featuring books and jewelry. All the proceeds from the event went to try and raise enough money to help the charity hold a give-away day, when needy families have the opportunity to pick up pet food and supplies, before Christmas, Rita Sarnicola, the event's organizer, said.

“I hate to think of animals not having food and a lot of times people will give their last can of tuna fish to their pets rather than see them go hungry,” Sarnicola said. “It's a need, just like when you have hungry people.”

In these economic hard times people need hope and happiness, Marvin McQuaid, the pantry's president, said. Pets bring that happiness so it's important to allow the community to keep their cats and dogs.

Many of the people that the pantry serves are retired, Marvin said, and once rent and other bills are taken out, they are left with hardly enough money for their food and almost nothing for their pets.

The McQuaids have been running the pantry out of their home for the past 11 years, with the help of Maxwell and Shirley Haines, and provide monthly opportunities for families to pick up food as well as take calls from pet owners in emergency situations, Mary Lou said.

“I answer the phones and listen to all of their sad stories,” Mary Lou said. “We get 60 to 80 calls a day and it breaks my heart to have to turn people away because I know no one else will help them.”

While Mary Lou is answering the phones, her husband travels around the area dropping off emergency supplies and picking up donations.

Most of the work is just simple shuttling things around, but give-away days are the best because you get to meet the people, Marvin said.

“You get that warm fuzzy feeling, it's impossible to describe,” he said. “I suppose that's a good term for it because we are helping warm fuzzy creatures.”