Support Matteo's Journey to a Pain-Free Life

Matteo, known around our house as Mattato Potato or Mattaters for short, is the little baby of our home. He is our 11 month old sweetheart. He spends his time either cuddling with my partner and I or cuddling in a pile with his two littermate brothers, Louis and Toothless, or our golden retriever, Aspen. If you cant find him cuddling with someone then you can find him third wheeling his brothers in whatever mischief they are up to. He is our little interior designer that specializes in kitchen countertops and tables. Matteo redecorates by nocking everything off the counters and table that he doesn't think go with the vibe of the room.

Over the last two months Matteo developed an eye infection in his right eye that has progressively worsened and has ended up infecting the back of his left eye. He has been seeing an ophthalmologist that was recommended by our vet to treat it and we are at a point where no treatment is working and the right eye is progressively getting worse and worse. As of Friday (11/08) he has glaucoma in his right eye that has significantly worsened since his initial visit, bleeding in the back of the right eye due to the glaucoma, the entire right eye is an ulcer, within the last two weeks he has went permanently blind in his right eye, the ophthalmologist believes his left eye is in the beginning stages of what has happened to his right eye, and Matteo’s ophthalmologist nor her colleagues don’t know why it has progressed to this extent. She believes that his eyes might not have fully developed and is the reason for making this infection so hard to treat. We are currently on the final treatment plan before surgery to remove the eye. Mattato is getting as aggressive a treatment that we can safely do. He is on four eye drops, three oral medications, and a steroid eye gel. We are hoping to see progress by Thursday (11/14) but if not then thats when a further discussion of removing the right eye will happen. We got an estimate of what the removal will cost and it is around $5,000 due upfront not including sending the eye to a pathologist to see if we can get a diagnosis for what is going on so we can effectively treat his left eye and hopefully prevent this situation with the left eye as well. We are in the process of contacting other vets to get an estimate of the cost for the surgery to see if we can get it cheaper. We have spent $1,700 on his vet bills alone the last month and a half not including a $1,200 vet bill we had for one of our dogs for emergency stitches. I was also just involved in a hit and run two weeks ago that the expense keeps rising for repairs on my car as well as having to replace the radiator on my partners car which was $1000 upfront. Everything has happened all at once and keeps happening. We are very drained financially and we dont know how we can afford the bill for the removal of Matteos eye if it gets to that point and euthanasia will never be an option with a cat that young.

Even after all of this, Matteo has kept his sweet cuddly personality and makes sure to get his cuddles in with us as well as continuing to reorganize our counter tops and table. We are ready to give Matteo the pain free life he deserves, we just need your help to get him there