Poor Smudgie. His right eye got all squinty just before we left on vacation a few weeks ago. The doctor gave him some eye drops and oral antibiotics. He didn't see anything in there, e.g., crud from the sheetockers and spacklers replacing the dining and living room ceilings. I didn't expect any remodelling-related crud to have gotten in his eye bc the cats were confined to rooms for days while the workers were here so they couldn't get out. He also didn't see any trauma, e.g., maybe Clara was feeling ornery and swatted Smudgie in the eye. Smudgie's had the occasional eye problem. So he got drops to help the eye and ABs JIC some kind of infection was involved.
Elyse the petsitter got his meds onto and into Smudgie. When we returned, his eye looked better, but it should have cleared up by then. Dr. Slade was seeing some of our other cats, so she took a look at Smudge, too. She switched him from the drops to the ointment. The drops are a steroid, which can cause increased drinking, which we thought we were seeing w/Smudge. He could also be drinking more bco whatever was going on w/his eye. We ended up switching back to the drops bc his eye condition deteriorated on the ointment. His eye has since improved again with the drops.
This past Saturday I went to give him a drop before we went out to eat. His eye looked gross. He looked like he had blood eyeliner all the way around his eye. The puffy affected part of his eye had a small bloody line in it; the puffy part had opened up and bled. We took him to the ER vet. She cleaned his eye up, put some stuff on it and took a good look at it. She also didn't see any trauma or foreign matter. She really couldn't do much, although the stuff she put on his eye probably made his eye feel better. She suggested that, unless something like this happens again, to just keep doing what we're doing until our appointment with the opthamologist, Dr. Ringle, tomorrow. Dr. Ringle saw Smudge years ago. Smudgie has beautiful eyes which are very often dilated. That could be a symptom of another problem (I think hypertension). Dr. Ringle ruled that out, saying Smudge has some kind of (probably) congenitally weak eye sphincter which could cause his eyes to be dilated so often.
So, once again, Smudge will see Dr. Ringle tomorrow. I hope that the doctor, with all his eye gadgets, will be able to figure out what Smudgie's problem is. Although Smudgie's eye looks better, it should have cleared up long before now if it was just a simple infection.
This is an old picture of Smudge (my newer pix are on my laptop, which I'm not using these days bc it's funking up my internet connection), so you may have seen this one already. Also, his eyes aren't dilated much here; usually, he has big black pools for eyes. No matter; he's beautiful no matter what his eyes are doing and one can never see his picture too often.
Smudgie is very handsome in this picture! He has gorgeous eyes... bvery beautiful!
Posted by: Bad Kitty cats | Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 05:23 PM