You know how typing things out helps you think a bit. Well, I went to my MU install and tried fiddling there. I found out that you don't need the second part of my solution above. So all you have to add is the following:
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
(Be sure to add it up around the database info... well, really just not at the end of the wp-config.php file).
That has gotten my local dev back up, and the caching column available on the sites page. The cache seems to be working too. But then again it was working earlier too.
Send some notes to the server folks to have it applied to the dev production server (yes we have a dev prod server... hehe).
Fingers crossed!