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Chronic Eye Junk

post #1 of 4
4/13/08 at 11:21am
Thread Starter 
Hi, I have littermate brothers who both have chronic eye snot. The vet looks every time and assures me it's not herpes, and not infected. I think they have chronic sinus trouble (whatever) between their eye & nose. The eye snot is a reddish/brown, and I do keep it cleaned. Is there anything, really, that will help?? L-lysine, eye rinse?? OR, really, is there nothing to be done?? And most important, it probably bothers me more than my boys, so if I need to chill, let me know. Thanks!
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post #2 of 4
4/14/08 at 8:55pm
Hey, I have littermate brothers with the same thing! One does have herpes, but the other doesn't have a problem with that. The one with herpes LOVES to have me dig the junk out, but the other one hates it! I do it anyway, of course!

Tears naturally contain a substance called porphyrin, which is a pigment. When the tears dry, they leave behind reddish-brownish "eye boogies," as I call them when I'm trying to pry them out of my cats' eyes. The tear ducts are right there in the corners of the eyes, so that's where the junk accumulates. There is also probably an issue with tear drainage, perhaps congenitally small tear ducts; this is likely the case with Persian cats and pop-eyed, smush-nosed dogs. Chronic inflammation results in scarring and this may also affect the tear ducts. My herpes cat seems to produce a lot more of the goop than his brother, and it's wetter, so I think herpes is a factor, though not a big one.

Breeders of little white dogs (like toy poodles) have a lot of supplements and products that they swear by to prevent that stained look; I'm not sure that any of them work that well. However, raw diets (homemade or commercial) are reputed to get rid of them.

So all-in-all, yeah, chill, just keep them clean, and if I find out more (I have a friend doing a survey on the dog products) I'll let ya know.
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post #3 of 4
4/17/08 at 9:04am
Dr. Jean - for the record. I have the littermate brother and sister of the boys in the original post. My brother was the one that wound up with the chronic herpe. We found it a coincidence that within your littermates, one has herpes and the other has the eye snot. It makes me wonder if there is something predisposed genetic trigger for this. This litter was orphaned at 10 days old and had the best nutrician that bottle fed babies could recieve. We also always wonder if that hurts their immunity to things like this.
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post #4 of 4
4/17/08 at 10:10am
So here's another coincidence!My boys were rescued from a feral mom at 2 weeks of age, so they were also bottle fed--although I did "doctor up" their KMR with colostrum and a couple other supplements, and started them on raw meat at about 4 weeks. They should have as good immune systems as possible given their rough beginnings.

I do think that kittens of a feral mom often have inadequate nutrition during gestation and subsequently, and I'm sure it does impair their immune system to some extent. However, gazillions of cats that had a perfectly normal start in life also have chronic recurring herpes...so we can't call a poor start *the* cause, but it's certainly a factor.

Ya know, herpes is universal in cats; they have all been exposed, and if they haven't, we give it to them with the rhinotracheitis vaccine, which *is* herpes. After sending a dozen difficult cases to my vet ophthalmologist and having them all come back as herpes, I ran into him at a luncheon and said, "Hey Matt, are *all* of these herpes." The answer was: "Yes!" So there you go!
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