Our cat won't stop grooming her eyelid / eye area

Hello - this is my first post here, apologies if I missed an intro thread or am in the wrong area. We just need help with our cat!!!

Our cat will vigorously (almost violently) clean her left eyelid / eye area to the point she recently scratched her cornea. Her third eyelid was swollen shut. We took her to the vet and have been medicating the eye and it is almost fully healed. She had been wearing a plastic cone collar to keep from scratching / agitating the area - on the vet's recommendation we removed the collar tonight and she almost immediately began to vigorously clean the left eyelid / eye area and was on the way to hurting herself again.

She has done this sort of cleaning in the past - you can actually hear her doing it (it makes a sort of scratching sound) but never to this recent level.

Our vet doesn't seem to understand why she would be behaving this way. Has anyone experienced a similar problem / know of any solutions (aside from never taking off the plastic cone, which I don't think she'd like very much!). Thank you!

First, I want to welcome you to TheCatSite.

You and your kitty have really been though an ordeal with that eye.
Hopefully members will have some ideas for you but...
if it were me, I might want a referral, from my vet to a specialist, if there is one in your area.

What is your kitty's name?
Does she have a history of allergies, behavior issues or anything the might be a clue to why she is doing this?

Thanks for the reply! Our cat's name is Daisy. She and her brother Tim are about 3.5 years old.

She doesn't have any allergies that we know of, but she does occasionally exhibit "rolling skin." It comes and goes - usually only for a minute or two at a time, and infrequently.

We're careful about what we feed them. We also keep the house pretty clean and don't have any other pets.

It's all very strange. Our vet seemed baffled. We're going back to see him next week; perhaps he'll have someone to refer us to.

Is she an Asian breed? Supposedly Asian breeds are more susceptible to "rolling skin syndrome". Though irritated or itching eyes would seem to be more of an allergy, chemical, environmental irritation. Does she have any hair loss or behavioral mood swings?

She's a domestic short hair (both she and her brother are shelter cats).

The vet mentioned allergies / environmental issues, but she isn't sneezy and doesn't really have regular discharge / tearing with her eyes (though has exhibited those symptoms since we started medicating her after the incident).

I know cats can have psycho-neurotic / OCD-like tendencies - I'm not sure that repeatedly rubbing that eye area could fall into that sort of behavior pattern or not, though.

A couple of other thoughts...
a dormant herpes viral infection followed by chronic dry eye.
Also I wonder if possibly eye lash hair in growing in instead of out.

If your vet is unable to help, I hope that you get a referral to a specialist.

Sending vibes that you find a solution for Daisy.
Please keep up updated about how your sweetie is doing.

Saying a quick Hi to Daisy's brother Tim kitty.

I think you'll need to take her to a cat eye specialist first, to rule out any serious eye condition that would be causing her to focus on the area. If the eye turns out to be normal, then you can look into whether it's an allergy or obsessive behavior. The fact that it's only one eye and not both suggests to me that there might actually be something wrong near or in that eye.

Welcome! Please have a vet take a look. I hope she's O.K.

Went back to the vet today - we're going to give her eye another week to heal, then see an ophthalmologist. Hopefully they'll have some insight. Thank you all for your replies! This is a very friendly forum!

Man, this is just a wild shot in the dark, but Snoopy, our fist cat, suddenly developed a problem with one eye. We took him to the vet, who had to anesthetize him to check, but he actually found a cat hair (imagine that!) lodged behind his eyeball.

You are taking such good care of Daisy.

Sending healing vibes your sweeties eyelid issue clears up this week.