Everyone loves to see the bright, clear, and shining eyes of their pets, especially cats. What if your cat’s eyes look a bit gooey? This is because your cat might be rubbing her face on the rug, against the sofa, or pawing at her eyes.
You need to be careful about this; your cat’s eye may discharge if your cat is affected due to a cold or serious illness. Therefore, you need to learn about the most common causes of eye discharge. This will help you to see when to see a vet and what needs to be done to ease your pet.
Table Of Contents
Common Cat Eye Problems:
The following are the Common cat-eye Problems.
Causes of Eye Discharge Problems:
Your cat will have clear and bright eyes if it’s healthy. You must note that these eye problems can spread to another cat who blinks excessively, paws at their eyes, squints, and rubs her eyes against the furniture. The cat-eye problem can offer severe impacts such as blindness or surgery. Therefore, it’s always suggested to consult your vet as soon as you see your cat has irritation in her eyes. There might be different reasons for the cat eye discharge:
Feline Upper Respiratory Infections:
Upper respiratory infections sometimes result in frequent eye discharge in cats. The infections include contagious respiratory disease, feline calicivirus, bacteria, protozoa, rhinotracheitis (herpesvirus), or pneumonitis. The symptoms can be severe or mild and may include pus-like and sticky eye discharge.
Pink Eye (Conjunctivitis):
Your cat may have an inflammation of the light pink lining in her eyes because of conjunctivitis. This may lead to swelling or your cat’s eye may have a pink lining around it. Moreover, conjunctivitis may feel light sensitivity, thick mucus, teary, or clear mucus eye discharge. Your cat may suffer fever, breathing problems, and diarrhea along with conjunctivitis.
Uveitis:
The cat-eye may suffer severe internal structures’ inflammation, cancer, trauma, infections, or immune problems. The uveitis may also result in serious painful inflammation of uveitis.
Epiphora (Watery or Tearing Eyes):
Your cat may suffer eye discharge if she has blocked tear ducts, viral conjunctivitis, overproduction of tears, and allergies. All of these diseases may lead to abnormal tearing.
Corneal Disorders:
Your cat’s cornea or the dome-shaped surface above the eyes may get ulcerated, injured, or inflamed. This may result in excessive blinking, increased tear production, inflammation, and cloudiness.
Keratoconjunctivitis Sicca (Dry Eye):
A dry eye or chronic lack of tear production can result in red eyes, and inflamed cornea. It may result in blindness if it’s left untreated. Your cat may suffer gooey eye discharge due to missing a watery portion of tears.
Other eye discharge problems may include a third eyelid problem, something lodged in the eye, or allergies.
Treatment for Eye Discharge:
There are certain reasons that may result in eye discharge. It’s always suggested to visit your vet whenever you feel, your cat has irritation in her eyes. Let’s get started with treatment now:
Conjunctivitis:
Weeds, dust, pollen, and other irritants can result in conjunctivitis. Therefore, steroid ointment can be used to treat conjunctivitis. However, you can use antibiotic ointments if conjunctivitis is caused due to bacterial infection.
Feline Upper Respiratory Infection:
Depending on the cause and seriousness of infections, you can treat them. You can use proper eye medication, antibiotic ointments, fluids, and antibiotics.
Corneal Disorders:
Your vet will prescribe you a treatment depending on what’s affecting your cat’s cornea. Your vet may clean your cat’s eye or use antibiotic eye drops/ointment for healing, cauterization, surgery, or removing loose corneal tissue.
Uveitis Treatment:
Similarly, your vet will first analyze your pet’s eye to know the cause of uveitis as it’s very hard to diagnose uveitis. To control pain and inflammation, your vet will prescribe your eye drops or ointment.
Tearing or watery eyes:
To prevent cat eye problems, your vet may prescribe you to use saline or plain water to clean your cat’s blocked tear duct. Moreover, you may need an antibiotic or eye ointment/drops to prevent infection.
Dry Eye:
Several things might cause dry eye which may include anything from immune-mediated disease to distemper. Your vet may prescribe your eye ointments/drops, antibiotics, artificial tears, and immune-suppressing drugs.
Feline Calicivirus Treatment:
Secondary bacterial infections can result in pneumonia and other severe health problems. If your cat is suffering from Feline Calicivirus then you need to take your cat to your vet. Treatment of this cat-eye problem may include supportive care, antibiotics, and symptom control to prevent infection.
Don’t know when to consult a vet?
Your cat is beautiful just like its eyes. A small cat eye problem may lead to serious disease. If you’re unsure when to take your cat to the vet then check your cat’s eye discharge symptoms.
If symptoms don’t clear within the first 24 hours then you need to visit your nearest vet as soon as possible. Moreover, you must not use the previous cat eye problem medication. The reason is that different issues are treated differently; thus, you’ll require different medications.
Home Care Tips to prevent Cat Eye Issues:
Continuous vaccination can help you in preventing cat eye problems. Moreover, you need to prevent cat overcrowding and monitor your cat’s eye after some time to check if it has cloudiness, redness, or color changes.
You must take it seriously if your cat’s eye is sensitive to light, changes shape, or discharges. To remove your cat’s discharge, you need to make your cat comfortable and get a cotton ball with you.
Dip a piece of cotton in water and clean eye discharge from the outward corner of the eye. Make sure to use a fresh piece of cotton whenever you wipe eye discharge. It’s always important to take care of your cat before you consult your vet for a cat-eye problem.
Final Verdict
As we have mentioned above noticing your cat eyes problem is very easy if you follow the upper ideas that we have already discussed. You will everything about this problem if you read the article carefully. We have mentioned everything on how to notice if your cat is suffering from eye disease. We have also explained what you should do if your cat is suffering and how you can help your cat get rid of this issue.