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- Sep 16, 2020
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Hello all!
Here's the story. Awhile ago our boy was diagnosed with feline herpes some few months back. (We've only owned him ourselves a few months prior to this). He's an older cat, about 17 now? But pretty healthy if a little overweight still. He's a very affectionate and playful cat, and quite active when he wants to be.
Well due to the herpes he ended up giving himself a small ulceration, luckily it's shrunk down and been otherwise stable. But there's another much more pressing issue... he's going through an outbreak that will not go away. He's basically been mostly stuck in an e-collar for the past two months now because every time we take the collar off we need to be right at his side, watching him very closely to make sure he doesn't scratch at it or dig at it hard while cleaning his face. Sometimes he'll be itching so badly his ear and face twitches...
He has been seeing an animal ophthalmologist and we have been following their suggestions the best we could. Reduce stress (he is for the most part a very content, relaxed kitty), warm compress to his eyes, using a gel... the latter two seemed to only aggravate his condition.
We do scold him sometimes if he is bullying our other cat, or licking his cone trying to groom himself or otherwise doing something else he shouldn't be doing, but it's only a quick verbal reprimand, sometimes physically stopping him from doing whatever he's doing (but not with excessive force and not in a way that would hurt him), and if he's being particularly naughty and won't stop we'll infrequently give him a spritz of water with a spray bottle.
He has an appointment again tomorrow but the ophthalmologist seems to be about as much at a loss as we are... his eyelids used to be super inflamed but we since took care of that, now it's just that persistent itching I think right now the main source of any stress he has comes from the fact his eyes are so dang itchy all the time-- a catch-22...
Any suggestions for what we could do would be wonderful, as we don't want our boy to live out the rest of his days in an e-collar.
Here's the story. Awhile ago our boy was diagnosed with feline herpes some few months back. (We've only owned him ourselves a few months prior to this). He's an older cat, about 17 now? But pretty healthy if a little overweight still. He's a very affectionate and playful cat, and quite active when he wants to be.
Well due to the herpes he ended up giving himself a small ulceration, luckily it's shrunk down and been otherwise stable. But there's another much more pressing issue... he's going through an outbreak that will not go away. He's basically been mostly stuck in an e-collar for the past two months now because every time we take the collar off we need to be right at his side, watching him very closely to make sure he doesn't scratch at it or dig at it hard while cleaning his face. Sometimes he'll be itching so badly his ear and face twitches...
He has been seeing an animal ophthalmologist and we have been following their suggestions the best we could. Reduce stress (he is for the most part a very content, relaxed kitty), warm compress to his eyes, using a gel... the latter two seemed to only aggravate his condition.
We do scold him sometimes if he is bullying our other cat, or licking his cone trying to groom himself or otherwise doing something else he shouldn't be doing, but it's only a quick verbal reprimand, sometimes physically stopping him from doing whatever he's doing (but not with excessive force and not in a way that would hurt him), and if he's being particularly naughty and won't stop we'll infrequently give him a spritz of water with a spray bottle.
He has an appointment again tomorrow but the ophthalmologist seems to be about as much at a loss as we are... his eyelids used to be super inflamed but we since took care of that, now it's just that persistent itching I think right now the main source of any stress he has comes from the fact his eyes are so dang itchy all the time-- a catch-22...
Any suggestions for what we could do would be wonderful, as we don't want our boy to live out the rest of his days in an e-collar.