You are reading the fourth chapter of O’Malley’s story.
Read the First Chapter
Read the Second Chapter
Read the Third Chapter
Read the Fifth Chapter
Read the Sixth Chapter
To Be Continued…

Hello animal-loving world! I can’t apologize enough for the way we have completely disappeared from the internet. We have been having a rough time lately, from just plain exhaustion, trying to manage O’Malley’s rehab in what little free time we have and a death in Nikki’s family which has been incredibly hard on her. We are trying our best to get back into the swing of things but please bear with us at being slow with this blog and our twitter account. Any loving thoughts for Nikki are greatly appreciated. I’d also like to give a HUGE thank you to Chelsea for keeping ILRA alive with her weekly #ShelterSketches! Now on to the more fun stuff!

The Recovery Process

O’Malley has been doing great, not that any of us expected any less from this boy. His wounds healed up great (he just had his stitches removed today) and he’s on the road to recovery. As I wrote last time, he needs rehabilitation to strengthen his muscles and make sure everything moves well and his scar tissue forms right. I’ll be straight up honest and say that we have not been able to devote as much time to his rehabilitation as we would have liked but he is still progressing and I know he’s going to come out on the other end a very healthy, fit cat. I’ve seriously been worrying about him and agonizing over the fact that everything we do now will affect O’Malley for the rest of his life and I know that we’re not doing perfect. But then I think about the alternative, of what would have happened to him had I not stopped to help him, and I know that he would prefer our imperfection to being left there alone. He’s such a loving, forgiving cat. I just love him, as does everyone else who meets him.

Now on to the cool stuff: As promised, here is an image of one of O’Malley’s X-rays. You can see his left femur completely out of the socket and the big break in his pelvis on the right.

Next up, O’Malley’s rehabilitation! I was able to get in contact with Sandra Hudson, the woman we met at that dog event, and she accepted O’Malley as a patient. The best part is that she’s giving me the rescue discount since she was moved by his story. Isn’t that great? O’Malley has been twice so far. It would have been best for him to be able to go twice a week but with my new full time schedule, it just isn’t possible. So we are going to be using his visits there as a sort of check-in and we’re going to be responsible for most of his physical therapy. The different things he does at his rehab sessions are really interesting. He starts by getting cold laser therapy. Basically she applies low-power light to his hip and it helps him heal faster! How cool is that?

Then he’s on to balancing on a balance board and a ball. The board makes him learn to shift his balance and improve his stability. The ball helps stretch his leg out and put weight on his foot. I looked into buying a balance board to use at home but the cheapest was $80 so we’re going to have to attempt to make one ourselves… wish us luck!

Then he does Cavaletti poles which for our purposes is two swimming noodles with bits of plastic piping laid over them to create a ladder rung type deal (it’s hard to explain). Anyway, we coax him to walk through it, over the pipes, so he has to lift his feet over them. This helps with his gait training and also re-teaches him where his back feet are. Sandra says that many cats who undergo trauma and/or surgery of his type have their connections between their brain and hind limbs damaged. Basically he has to re-learn where his feet are without him having to look. So he has to figure out how to lift his back legs over the poles. Kinda neat when you think about it. Anyway, we make it harder by spreading the poles out and by crisscrossing them. This works best by tempting him with treats!

The last thing we do at his sessions is also the coolest! Well, according to me, anyway. I’m sure he would tell you otherwise! Anyway, O’Malley does aquatic therapy! Yes, we actually stick that poor kitty on a partially submerged treadmill and make him walk for several minutes. He complains about it, of course, but as always he does what is asked of him. Aquatic therapy is so good because it transfers heat to his hip, supports a good amount of his weight so he can slowly add more weight to that hip, it improves his gait by making his stride longer and it forces him to continue walking which increases his endurance. It really is very cool how much it helps him. I’m sure you’ll love the video!

How You Can Help O’Malley

Now here’s the part where you can help. While we have been helped by some AMAZING people who have cut our costs by at least half by donating their time and offering discounts, we have still spent close to $500 on his recovery thus far. This is only for his vet visits, surgery, medications, vaccinations, food (since he’s on a special diet) and rehabilitation. This does not cover what we bought to do his rehab at home, litter (we don’t use clay litter in our house so it really does add up), lost wages from taking off work to take him places, etc. We are trying to be very reasonable in what we are asking help with. You can view the gallery to see proof of most of his bills (we misplaced the latest rehab bill) so you know you can trust that we’re not making this up. Also, you can see some of the bills have costs for animals other than O’Malley but we have not included this in our calculations. For instance, there is a bill of $50 for two combo tests, one for O’Malley and one for another foster cat, Jacob. We only counted $25 towards our total. O’Malley will also need to go in about a month from now to be neutered, get his FVRCP booster, and get new X-rays taken. Our wonderful vet, Dr. Jill, quoted us at $120 for everything which is an awesome deal! We would also like to take him in to rehab at least a few more times, which will cost $28.75 for each visit from now on.

So the breakdown of our costs is this: So far we have spent $485. Adding in his vet bill of $120 next month brings us to $605. We would like to take him in for rehab at least 3 more times (he has an appointment scheduled for next week Tuesday already) which would come to $86.25 for a grand total of $691.25. So for all of this, we have set a goal of raising $700 to help us with O’Malley’s recovery. I think this is awesome considering his surgery alone was quoted at $750 to $1500 by other veterinarians! Can you believe how little it cost to CHANGE this boy’s life, to SAVE it? it gives me goosebumps thinking of how so many people are coming together to help him. O’Malley thanks each and every one of you!

Donate by clicking on the widget, or go straight to O’Malley’s ChipIn page.

Need an Incentive?

So as if changing this amazing, handsome’s cat’s life for the better isn’t enough, we have some fun incentives for donating as well. When we reach half of our goal, $350, we will release a funny home video of the crazy things pet parents sometimes have to do at 1:00 in the morning. If we reach our full goal of $700 then we will release an embarrassing video of me singing to and dancing at the kids. Sound fun? Good! Thank you for all of your continued support!

Filed under: Animals in Need, Donations, Personal Stories, Videos on November 14th, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Hey everyone! It’s Ashley and we’re currently pawtying it up here at BlogPaws West! We’ve been having such an amazing time that we haven’t been able to find even a second to post. It’s been really great meeting all these awesome bloggers & tweeters and the energy from the last one has definitely found its way to this one as well. The networking is amazing and if you’re involved in the pet blogosphere I really hope you get to make it to a BlogPaws soon! We have so many exciting projects to tell you about and tonight’s is one that is so simple and yet it has the potential to help feed thousands of shelter dogs!

Write a Post, Help a Dog!

I’m talking about Pedigree’s “Write a Post, Help a Dog” project. Pedigree, the wonderful company who once again sponsored my trip here, is always looking for more ways to help shelter dogs. By now I’m sure many of you have heard of their Adoption Drive. The commercials they have on TV, showing how shelter dogs are heroes, telling us “Do not pity a shelter dog, adopt one”, ALWAYS make me cry. Seriously, no matter how many times I see it, I always cry from happiness. Awesome marketing for a GREAT cause! Obviously we here at ILRA are completely behind what they do.

In case you didn’t know, they have had a campaign running this year where for every new fan they get on their Facebook page, they will donate a bowl of food to shelter dogs. It has been a tremendous success and since it began in February they have accumulated over 1.1 MILLION fans – meaning 1.1 MILLION meals for shelter dogs! How amazing is that? And they have no intention of stopping there. Pedigree hopes to donate 4 million bowls of food – one for every dog that will end up in a shelter this year.

Now you can help them do even more for dogs in need simply by writing a post. For every blog that writes a post about their adoption drive from now until next Sunday, which is September 19, Pedigree will donate a TWENTY pound bag of their brand new Healthy Longevity Food for Dogs to a shelter. It’s really as easy as that! Write about an awesome cause and and shelters nationwide will receive a large donation of food. I’m super excited about it and I hope you will be too! Go out there and write your posts, then link to them here to the BlogHop (and to our comments) so we can help make sure Pedigree sees it. Come on, let’s feed shelter dogs!

Help a Dog, Win a T-Shirt!

As a small token of our appreciation, if you write a post and leave a comment below telling us about it, we will enter you for a chance to win a Pedigree “Dogs Rule” T-shirt! How awesome is that? We love wearing our shirts – not only is it just a great message (except maybe to our feline friends…), but it’s a great conversation starter to tell others about this great project. Make sure to include the link to the post so we can read it too! We’ll pick a winner for the shirt when the campaign ends – September 19th!

Don’t forget to add your post to this BlogHop (at the end of this long list there is a link that says “Click Here to Enter”) so that Pedigree gets notified that you participated. And let us know as well so you can be entered into a draw for a Dogs Rule t-shirt! You can also tweet @PedigreeUS with your blog post URL and the hashtag #dogsrule.

The Write a Post, Help a Dog Blog Hop: More Posts about the Adoption Drive!

Filed under: BlogPaws, Causes, Donations on September 10th, 2010 | 73 Comments »

Hey everyone! Be the Change and BlogPaws are at it again, asking bloggers to be the change they want to see for animals. This latest call to action involves raising donations for shelters, rescues & pet food banks to help animals in need. It’s called the “Dog Days of Summer Food & Supplies Drive” and starting today (July 19th), with your help, we in the pet blog community are going to be collecting cat and dog food for shelters all over the country. Here’s what you can do to take part!

How to Participate

• Find a shelter or pet food bank near you and call to find out whether they accept food donations. (For people in the US and Canada you can search for a local shelter and pet food bank here.)
• Print out the BTC4Pets flier then head over to your local pet supplies store to pick up a bag of food.
• Drop off the bag of food at your local shelter or food bank and have someone take a picture of you with the bag and flier.
• Write a blog post, tweet (with #BTC4Pets) and share on Facebook your pawsome achievement to inspire your friends to do the same. (Of course you can always write two blog posts — one calling your friends to join you in the food drive and the second talking about your group’s trip to the shelter!)
• Post the picture of yourself donating the food and a link to your blog/twitter account/Facebook post to the Be The Change for Pets Facebook wall along with the pounds of food donated. We’ll add this amount to the total food/supplies donated so we can all see our impact!
• Want to take the campaign to the next level? Find out how to start a pet food bank on a shoestring budget.

To help out in our town, I Love Rescue Animals is going to be starting a drive to collect food for a few local animal groups, including our favorite cat group Central Texas Feline Rescue. We are personally trying to gather donations from several different area businesses – our main being at Camp Bow Wow Austin. If you’re in town, stop by! What plans do you have for the Dog Days of Summer Food Drive and who are you going to help?

Filed under: Animals in Need, BlogPaws, Causes, Donations on July 19th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Last week may have been the official Be The Change day (click that link to read our post out about it and help out Feline Forever Ranch), but that by no means says that it has to stop there. This week on April 21st, there will be a PawPawty (or BlogPawty as the case may be this time) to help raise money for Pets Without Parents. To help out, I am going to be hosting a giveaway of my own.

The Giveaway

If you didn’t know it already, I am a web designer. I work for a small company here in Austin, but in my spare time, I freelance under the name Design Coyote (and @designcoyote on twitter). So to do my part in this great twitter pawty, I will be giving away one awesome pet design (estimated cost up to $500) for one lucky pet blogging winner!

You can see my work here at ILRA (the current design and the illustrations), over my personal blog Snailbird, or my design site that I linked to above.

The Rules

01. You don’t have to have a blog to win. We can set you up with an awesome blog either on Blogspot or a self-hosted WordPress blog (or another blog platform of your choice). The only catch is, whether you do have a blog or you’re going to be making one, it has to be about animals/pets!
02. WordPress.com blogs are not eligible unfortunately, only because they do not host custom designs. If you have a WordPress.com blog and win, you have two options: either move to a hosted wordpress blog, or move to blogspot.
03. You do not have to make a donation to be eligible to win.

How To Win

Now here’s the fun part! Ash and I tried to think up different ways that would not only be fun to do, but would also get people to promote adoption, shelters, and rescues and here’s what we came up with. To have your name thrown in the hat, we would like for those of you on twitter to pick a twitter account that posts about animals in need (be it urgents needing fosters or adoption, or animals requiring donations for injuries or rescue purposes) and RT it.

Once you’ve done your retweet to help the cause, comment here with a link back to your retweet, and we’ll toss your name into our hat of entries. If, for some reason, you do not have a twitter account, no worries. Just find something you would like to “retweet” and post it on your blog and post that link here! This giveaway is open as of now and will continue on until 1am EST on Monday the 26th of April I will announce the winner sometime later that day.

Be sure to attend the awesome BlogPawty on Wednesday starting at 7pm eastern time. It’s going to be a blast – full of new friends, great music, and awesome connections. See you there!

Contest Closed!

Winner will be announced soon.

Filed under: BlogPaws, Causes, Donations, Events, Giveaways, Website Related on April 19th, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I’m sure a lot of you have heard of this movement already. It’s been HUGE on twitter and across the blogosphere since the BlogPaws conference last weekend. This video has practically been going viral and it’s easy to see why. It’s a simple concept and yet the potential impact for animals everywhere is unimaginable! The video is also incredibly touching and no one seems to be able to watch it with a dry eye. Already people have raised close to $1000 for a no-kill rescue in Columbus, Ohio: Pets Without Parents. Challenges are being laid down all over the place for more people to get involved and do their part to help animals. It’s already a well-organized, well-oiled machine, getting out an incredibly important message that people seem to be responding amazingly well to. To think this all started with a session at the first-ever pet bloggers conference…

I had the pleasure of attending the “Be The Change You Want to See” session. No lie, and I told this to all of the panel speakers I met, this was my absolute favorite session! Seriously, I was quite mad at myself afterward for not having taped it. I hope they come together next year for another session! It was so inspiring and motivating that I was all gung-ho and ready to make a difference even before they threw down the #BeTheChange challenge! The panel consisted of Dr. V from Pawcurious, Dorian Wagner from Your Daily Cute and Lynn Haigh from Pawpawty.com and was moderated by Jane Harrell from Petfinder.com.

Jane started the session by talking a little about Petfinder.com. She talked about how Petfinder began and that in and of itself was one of the most awe-inspiring stories about helping animals I’ve ever heard! Did you know that Petfinder was created back in 1995 by Betsy and Jared Saul, a husband and wife who dared each other to make a real difference with their New Year’s Resolutions. They decided that the internet needed to be utilized to help shelter animals get more exposure and they began by personally entering the information and photos of homeless animals around New Jersey. As they grew, they decided to expand nationwide and they have never looked back! 15 years later and Petfinder has helped to unite over 15 MILLION pets with loving owners! I can’t even begin to imagine how incredible the Sauls’ must feel. Their one, relatively small decision has changed the lives of 15 million animals for the better. 15 MILLION! Wow. Just wow.

First up from the panel was Dr. V who was very charming as she told of her “harebrained” idea to raise money by eating dog food. She thought it would be something small but quickly found out that people really enjoy watching other people eat gross things. She raised more than she ever expected: $2250, which with a matching donation from the incredible people at k9uisine.com, meant a total of $4500 for the shelters she was supporting! Not bad for crazy scheme, huh? Now crazy is something I can do. In fact, it’s what I do best. I come up with silly ideas and Nikki helps bring them to fruition. We can make a difference too! (By the way, to raise money for today’s #BeTheChange challenge, Dr. V also ate some Pupperoni! Yum!)

Next to speak was Dorian Wagner who related the stories of how she has raised not just money but also toys for animals in need! I love her idea for the Santa Paws Drive and can’t wait to help her raise awareness this year! Can you imagine the happiness that would come from giving homeless pets their very own Christmas presents? I know they’re animals but you will never for one second convince me that that they did not feel that they were loved when they received those toys! They knew that someone in the world cared for them and that’s the best Christmas gift you could ever ask for!

Last, but most certainly not least, on the panel was Lynn, who is probably best known for being the typist for @frugaldougal on twitter. He’s the hairy mastermind behind what has become one of the biggest pet sensations on twitter – the PawPawty. A PawPawty is an all-twitter, 24-hour “pawty” held to raise donations for different animal rescues & organizations that are randomly chosen from suggestions of participants. The first PawPawty was held back in March of 2009 and in that very short amount of time, the PawPawties have raised a total of $26,060 for 17 different animal groups! Isn’t that just incredible? I am in awe! Lynn, who is always entertaining, told great stories about the blunders she found herself in as she learned the ins and outs of raising money online. The tale that probably got the most laughs was the one where PayPal contacted her & suspended her account because they thought she was a money launderer! Haha! All I can say is that I’m glad these bumps in the road didn’t deter her because the animal world wouldn’t be the same without her and Mr. FD!

At the end of the session, they gave away some cute prizes and one lucky winner got to choose the shelter that would receive the donations raised by the first #BeTheChange pawty. As it turns out, the woman who won worked with Pets for Parents, one of the groups who were lucky enough to receive $2800 from BlogPaws, as well as presents from a few of the sponsors! They must have some major karma built up to be so lucky! The majority of #BeTheChange participants are raising money for this group and they have already doubled the set goal of $500. That’s awesome for them! However, since they have so many people backing them already, I’m going to help raise awareness for another group in need of donations.

Romeo Golon aka Romeothecat and his staff Caroline also pick animal groups each month that they raise donations for. This month’s rescue is Forever Home Feline Ranch which is a newer no-kill cat rescue based in Springfield, Illinois. They are currently without a physical ranch but are instead a dedicated network of fosters. Who knows, the donations raised could go towards getting them a real ranch! For more information, check out the FirstGiving page set up by Romeo here. This looks like a great group and I know they can use all the help they can get. Being a foster is not easy but these wonderful volunteers do it because they know they are changing the lives of the cats they save. Can you help them out?

Now don’t think you’re alone in taking up this challenge. Nikki & I have something up our sleeves for the #BeTheChange pawty as well but that won’t be announced until this Sunday. For now, let’s get out there and help an animal today! That being said, time to go feed the ferals that live around our house. ^_^

Filed under: Animals in Need, BlogPaws, Causes, Donations, Events, Rescue/Shelter, Videos on April 16th, 2010 | 3 Comments »