{"id":136980,"date":"2009-12-28T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/goforward.harpercollege.edu\/page.cfm?p=5654&newsid=915"},"modified":"2009-12-28T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T18:00:00","slug":"harper-college-holiday-tradition-helps-pets-chicago-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/136980","title":{"rendered":"Harper College Holiday Tradition Helps Pets, Chicago Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By John Keilman, Chicago Tribune<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seven years ago, animal lover Jennifer Pitek took note of the holiday food drives on the Harper College campus in Palatine and asked herself, &#8220;Why not something for pets?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She set out a box and asked for donations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I knew there was a great need for shelter and food,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I thought I would try it, and it&#8217;s been successful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Today, Pitek, a secretary in Harper&#8217;s Center for New Students, collects food, toys, treats, leashes and bedding for dogs and cats each year.<\/p>\n<p>The need appears to be spiking in the weak economy. Kibble Korner, a Rockford-based pet food pantry, helps 300 households.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have a lot of people unemployed, and the pantry as a whole has a greet need,&#8221; said Melissa Seeling, the pantry&#8217;s founder. &#8220;What we&#8217;re finding is that animals are being returned to shelters because families can&#8217;t afford to feed them, or because they lost their home to a foreclosure and have to move into an apartment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The other half of the college&#8217;s donations will go downstate to Perry County, where high unemployment has also imperiled many animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By John Keilman, Chicago Tribune Seven years ago, animal lover Jennifer Pitek took note of the holiday food drives on the Harper College campus in Palatine and asked herself, &#8220;Why not something for pets?&#8221; She set out a box and asked for donations. &#8220;I knew there was a great need for shelter and food,&#8221; she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}