3mo kitten with a slightly squinty right eye, yellowish discharge...

The fun never stops around here!

Came home from work today to notice our (almost) 3 month old kitten, Harvey, had a large amount of dried yellowish discharge under his right eye. Upon further inspection, it seemed he was squinting his eye slightly -- not a lot, but a little. My boyfriend, who works from home, of course hadn't noticed.

We're scheduled to go to the vet Monday morning for his second set of core vaccinations anyway, so I'm thinking unless things become more pronounced, we will probably wait it out until then. For now, I doused his paws and the back of his neck in half apple cider vinegar half water solution, and am going to switch from wetwipes to cotton balls with homemade saline solution for wiping his eye gunkies. Plan to do ACV 3 times a day.

I guess the main thing is... I'm not sure if it's conjunctivitis, or if maybe my older catchild might have poked him in the eye. They wrestle a lot, and while I trim their nails and they're never sharp-sharp, they were due for a snip. Which has of course now been completed on both cats. (Overprotective? maybe.)

I've taken a couple of pictures -- I woke him up from a dead sleep, so the squinting was a bit more pronounced. His energy and eating are completely unaffected, and he is as affectionate as ever. One sneeze this evening... and it was probably from dust. Any more suggestions to make him comfy? Any ideas on what it might be?

With that much redness & irritation and discharge, I'd take him to the vet ASAP and wait on getting his shots until the eye thing clears up. In the meantime, you can apply a warm damp cloth to his eye to soothe it.

Did you take Harvey to the vet? How is he?

Thanks for the responses -- I worked a double shift today, so I haven't been around. I'm here to report... wow. I'd never believe it if I hadn't just seen it. His eye is almost completely better, almost no discharge since this morning. It's AMAZING.

When I noticed it yesterday, I of course Google'd like any crazy cat parent would do. I found this website - http://www.earthclinic.com/Pets/conjunctivitis.html and it said to try the Apple Cider Vinegar, like I said before. I saw all those positive reviews and said what the hell. We put it on the back of his head and paws last night, this morning, and this afternoon. I'll try to pin him down long enough to take a picture... he keeps jumping up here to try to type too, haha! I am going to continue the regimen through the weekend, but I'd be surprised if anything was left by Monday! I'll never doubt a dollar home remedy again!

I kinda sound like a shill, but I promise. (Plus, what ACV company would pay me to do this? Haha!) I'll try to get some pictures in a bit.

I just wanted to update everyone on the Harv... I've been in Las Vegas for work for the past week, so I didn't have time to sit and write. (Poor me, I know!)

Vet didn't give him his 2nd set of core vaccines since he was sick but said it looked like the very beginning of an upper respiratory infection, as he had some nasal drainage too. They put him on 1 cc of clavamox twice daily, and neomycin eyedrops twice daily as well. I had to leave the next day for work, so DB has been playing kitten doctor all week! I came home to a well little kitten! We are supposed to stop the eyedrops Monday, then continue the clavamox another week or until it runs out. Then back to the vet for the 2nd vaccines! This wouldn't be as hard if it wasn't for the fact that our vet is in NJ at the same place we adopted Crumb from... it's just so much cheaper out there than in NYC!

Also, to make problems more difficult, we got in the car to go home from Grandma and Grandpa's house... and I noticed fleas on Harvey! We luckily decided not to bring Crumb with us. I'll go on with more of that in my next post...