My Kitty’s Eyes

Why are your cat’s eyes watery?

Good question. One without an easy answer.

Nearly any opthamological problem causes eyes to water, so you need to ask yourself some other questions.

• Are both eyes watery, or just one?
• Did the problem just start, or is this a chronic condition?
• Does the eye appear cloudy?
• What color is the discharge?
• Is there any sign of injury (is the eye swollen or scratched)?
• Are there any symptoms elsewhere in the body (sneezing, coughing, lethargy)?

If only one eye is affected, there’s an increased likelihood of injury. Remember: Just because you can’t see a scratch doesn’t mean it’s not there.

If the problem appeared suddenly, there’s an increased likelihood of injury or illness, such as an upper respiratory infection. Some infections, such as conjunctivitis, also can appear in just one eye.

If the problem is chronic, especially if it’s in both eyes or if it comes and goes, there’s more reason to suspect a condition such as herpes, distichia, or glaucoma.

If the eye is cloudy, the problem could be an ulcer (especially if it’s in only one eye), glaucoma or a cataract.

Clear, watery discharge could be anything from a serious injury to a minor irritation, but dark or thick discharge always needs quick attention from a vet.

If your cat is lethargic, if it’s not eating, or if it’s coughing or sneezing, the problem might not really be in the eyes. Cats get viruses similar to what we call colds or flu in humans that cause the eyes to water.

In short, figuring out the cause of watery eyes isn’t always easy. If and how soon the problem goes away can determine whether you need to see a vet.

But left unattended, even a minor scratch can turn into a nasty infection or ulcer.

Injury is one of the few eye problems little Lizzie hasn’t suffered through.

If you know your cat’s eye is scratched or burned, stop reading this and get her to the vet. I mean it. Go. Here’s a resource to find an emergency clinic near you.

But many injuries are not that obvious. A little scratch, for example, can be invisible to the naked eye. Vets can use fluorescent dyes to detect them.

Your kitty’s eyes also can get burned from chemicals (one of the reasons cats are used in barbaric cosmetics tests, but don’t get me started on that). Even things such as flea medicines can be dangerous if they get in your cat’s eyes. Again, you might not be able to see the initial burn.

If your cat is squinting, if its eye is red or runny, if it keeps pawing at its eye … there could be an injury you can’t see and probably can’t treat at home. And just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean that your cat isn’t hurting or that it can’t develop into something worse, such as an infection. If it does get worse, it can lead to other problems down the road, including glaucoma.

So if you think your kitty’s eye has been injured, call your vet, or go to this link to find an emergency clinic near you. About the only home treatment you can try is flushing the eye with sterile saline (not commercial eye drops that contain chemicals).

Glaucoma is Lizzie’s latest problem, and not nearly as rare in cats as some of the other issues she has faced.

Glaucoma can be hereditary, but it also can be the result of other eye problems (a good reason to catch problems early).

What is glaucoma? I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet, so here’s a definition (of human glaucoma) from the Glaucoma Research Foundation. Basically, glaucoma is an umbrella name for a variety of conditions, all of which result in abnormally high pressure in the eye, and all of which can lead to blindness by destroying the optic nerve. In other words, glaucoma is a bad thing for your cat to have.

In its advanced stage, glaucoma is pretty easy to spot because of the cloudy or milky appearance. In its earlier stages, however, even a trained professional can easily miss it just by looking. A veterinary opthamologist uses a device to measure the pressure in the eye.

What to watch for? Redness, squinting, and watery eyes are early warning signs, but all of these can be symptoms of dozens of other problems.

Eyes that don’t react to light by dilating are a more advanced symptom, followed by that milky glaze and even eyes that start to bulge. Let’s try to get your cat some help before those things happen.

Glaucoma can be caused by other problems, including chronic inflammation, injury, ulcer. I don’t know if a previous problem caused Lizzie’s glaucoma, but if you’ve been reading this site you know it’s not a bad guess to think so.

So here’s some layman’s advice: If your cat has had herpes, or an injury, ulcer, distichia, tumor, etc., it’s probably a good idea to ask your vet to check for glaucoma as she ages.

Treatment can be as easy as drops or pills, but surgery can be necessary. Another good reason to catch it early if you can.

If you have a cat with glaucoma, be sure to tell us how you spotted it and how you’re treating it.

Lizzie’s eyes would occasionally sort of swell shut and ooze a thick, black discharge. On little lily white Lizzie, the discharge is easy to see. On a darker cat, you might have to look a little harder.

We couldn’t figure out what was going on, because she would get real bad and then be fine. It seemed to flare up in times of stress, but we weren’t sure. Well, the hero of this story is, you guessed it: Dr. Susan Kirschner. This was an easy one for the good doctor. Herpes.

Herpes in cats, it seems, is a lot like herpes in humans. Pretty much everyone carries the virus, but not everyone shows symptoms. In cats, all cats have the virus, but most have antibodies that prevent it from causing problems. Most, but not Lizzie.

Also like in humans, the cause of outbreaks in cats can be hard to pinpoint. Some literature points to stress or illness, some to seasonal allergies. Sometimes no one knows. Some flare-ups are mild and go away on their own. Others are very stubborn and require drops or oral anti-viral drugs.

In Lizzie’s case mild outbreaks are controlled with idoxuridine drops, somewhat-worse outbreaks require the addition of L-lysine food supplements, and for severe case we call in the big guns, the famcyclovir tablets.

We have found that as we’ve addressed the distichia problem, her outbreaks have become much less frequent and easier to control.

Ulcers, as you can imagine, can be very painful for a cat but difficult to see with the naked eye.

A vet often needs to use a “Woods’ scope” and fluorescent dye to diagnose the problem. Even this relatively simple procedure sometimes is better left to a specialist, however, because if the ulcer is very deep, applying the dye can cause problems.

Your cat might just need some eye drops and the ulcer will heal on its own. In Lizzie’s case, that wasn’t the case. She needed more surgery. Back to Dr. Kirschner’s office. If only the good doctor awarded points for frequent visitors. Lizzie would be eligible for a trip to Europe by now (I can see her now, wearing a beret and sipping wine under the Eiffel Tower …).

Anyway, when people have eye surgery they wear a patch until the eye heals. But you have a cat, so you know that’s not going to work. Instead, the doctor sews the cat’s inner eyelid shut to protect the eye. That works. Unless it’s Lizzie. Lizzie managed to undo the stitch before I could even get to the doctor’s office to pick her up. I guess she didn’t want to miss any of the sights of Paris.

Still, her eye healed fine, but she still has a bit of a cloudy scar where the ulcer was.

Lizzie always squinted and her eyes were watery. An otherwise docile cat who let us handle her pretty much as we pleased, she would recoil if we got too near her eyes.

Fortunately our vet at the time, Dr. Nancy Curran, took our concerns seriously and looked hard for the problem. She thought she saw extremely fine hairs on the underside of Lizzie’s eyelids. That was odd, she said, because while she saw that fairly often in certain breeds of dogs, she had never seen it in a cat. She suggested we take Lizzie to see a veterinary opthamologist, Dr. Susan Kirschner.

Dr. Kirschner took one look and said those were indeed hairs. She gave me the name of the condition: distichia. She concurred that she rarely sees the condition in cats. First, she manually plucked the hairs from the eyelids as I held Lizzie.

Now understand that I have delivered subcutaneous fluids, nursed a cat who had a stroke, dosed cats with pills, syringes, eye droppers, and been with my cats for any number of unpleasant medical procedures over the years. Never before had my knees buckled like they did there in Dr. Kirschner’s office.

The procedure is so delicate, with sharp tweezers poised against the eye lids of a squirming cat, that I would suggest you have an opthamologist perform if at all possible. In addition, hairs are virtually invisible to the naked eye. You need a microscope to see them. I doubt anyone who doesn’t do this every day could balance a microscope in one hand and grab those tiny pesky hairs with a pair of tweezers as deftly as Dr. Kirschner did.

Eventually, I agreed to have Lizzie sedated so that the doctor could remove the hairs permanently. This can be done in several ways, including cryotherapy.

It’s been more than a year since we did that, an Lizzie now peers up at us with big, bright, wide-open little eyes. No more squinting, no more watering, no more pain.

Don’t be too critical of your vet if she can’t diagnose the problem. In my research, I’ve found several medical sources for vets that talk at length about distichia in dogs but either ignore or downplay the problem in cats. One such article, after pages about how bad the problem can be in dogs, the vet summed up feline distichia by saying it’s extremely rare and rarely causes any discomfort for cats.

I think Lizzie would like to set him straight on that last point.