Save The Cheese

Thank you for visiting our little Cheese Site. Poke around, visit the sponsors, buy a t-shirt, and if inclined, we’re not proud enough to reject a donation to assist in helping Cheese get back to health.

Who’s Cheese? Well, click here to visit a gallery of his pictures.

Kimberly first met Cheese while he was busy jumping out of trash cans at a local high school. Besides scaring the heck out of the office staff at the school, he’d also sit and meow at anyone, although he was mostly ignored. At the time, he was bloated looking, and not allowing anyone to touch him, so we actually thought he was a pregnant female. Kimberly worked at building trust, but “the cat” wouldn’t come close. Fearing for yet another litter of strays in the world, Kimberly obtained a live trap from a friend, and she captured “the cat.” In all honesty, our intention was to have “her” evaluated, any shots and depending on her health and the status of her pregnancy either foster her until we can have her adopted or accepted by a rescue agency.

Little did we know what what was in store for us.

We set up the master bathroom as a “safe room” for “the cat” to keep her isolated from the other cats. The first night home, “the cat” wouldn’t come near us, although was VERY interested in the abundance of food, toys and OH.MY.GOODNESS, is that a LITTER-BOX?!? She jumped right in, rooted around a bit and had a blissful potty. You could see in her expression that, “WOW, THIS is the life!” Kimberly and I didn’t sleep too much that night from all the noise “the cat” was making with the toys, food and litter. Morning came and as I was taking my shower, “the cat” kept pounding on the shower door and meowing, although still wouldn’t let me get too close. And it was pretty much the same when Kimberly took her shower, although when she was done, I heard her call, “Ed, can you HELP me please?” I went in to see “the cat” licking Kim’s toes. Everywhere Kim went, so did the cat. I finally sat on the floor of the bathroom and this cat just piled in my lap and proceeded to give me kisses and hugs.

“Damn,” I thought, “the last cat that gave me kisses is still with us after 12 years.”

It did give me a good chance to take a look over the beast to see if there were any ticks, injuries and such and OOPS! This cat is DEFINITELY not a “she.” (Please remember this for later.) A visit to our wonderful Veterinarians found nothing wrong and shots were had. In the mean time, though, we started to see this cat’s wonderful personality, fondness of people and, frankly, goofy nature. Because of the clean bill of health, we decided to introduce the cat to our others and they hit it off. It was also about this time that I was watching a cartoon called “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.” On this show, there is an incredibly bizarre character named “Cheese.” That combined with his orange coat cemented his name. He grew, and developed his coat. In talking with some CFA-type cat “professionals,” we’ve discovered that he’s most likely a Norwegian Forest Cat, or mostly one, anyway, a hardy, personable breed. We now feel that it’s possible he was “dumped” because of problems.

When he got to around one year old, Cheese started developing some health problems, Irritable Bowel for one, but the most troubling is that he has FLUTD, or Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease. As a male cat, this has led to not just some irritation and occasional infections, but full out urinary blockages. This is life threatening that if not treated immediately, can lead to death due to the build up of toxins in the body. Working with his Veterinarians, we’ve had him unblocked several times. I’ve also studied journal papers regarding using massage to unblock his urinary tract which has worked a few times, although Cheese and I don’t like to talk about it. We’ve tried medications. All this is costly. The only option we’re left with is for him to have a Urethrostomy. This operation removes the bottleneck in his system by, well, removing his penis so that the stricture point is gone. Yes, Cheese needs a Gender Reassignment.

It was the night of Feb. 9th, 2008 that things became critical. Cheese seemed ill during the day, but didn’t seem too sick. We had a Girl Scout event to go to that Saturday, but when we returned, Cheese seemed even worse. When I couldn’t get him to respond to me, I took him to the emergency care veterinary hospital. We were told that it didn’t look good, and I prepared our family for the worst. It was through diligent care that he has recovered enough to come home. He still isn’t 100% and we’re fearful of it happening again. Our costs, just since February 9th has been $2300, and he still needs $2000 to finally have the operation. His total costs since we captured him is approaching $5000, without adding in the operation.

The question is, when is it too much? How can we spend this much on a cat? Simply put, when we adopted him, we made a promise to give him every chance to survive. When he’s not ill, he’s one of the most enjoyable cats I’ve ever met. Those that have met him fall in love. He is just a fantastic companion to Kimberly and I, our daughters and the other cats. Through this site, we’re hoping to recover some of our costs through the sale of t-shirts, ad revenue and possibly any donations. If it gets to the point that we have recovered costs, we intend to set up a non-profit fund to assist other cats with the high cost of critical Veterinary care.

Cheese has had his operation, and is doing great. We were able to get it done for significantly less than originally thought, but with every bit as much skill.

Please poke around and visit often to see additional pictures, products. Or, got a question? Check out the FAQ to see if we’ve covered it.
Thank you,
Edward and Kimberly Walaski