Hi everyone,
I stumbled across this forum and went deep down to see if someone has had similar issues and posted something about it, but I couldn't find anything and I am really desperate. Also bear with me please, it is quite a long story, but I don't know how to keep it shorter and what info might be important or not...
My cat Panpan is about 1.5 years old and around the beginning of August, we started to notice that her eye keeps twitching. At this point there was another cat in the household (around the same age) and they are very playful together so we thought she just hit her head or her eye is a bit irritated. However, it didn't stop. Also, one day the right eye would twitch, a few days later it would be the other eye. Her usual behavior is normal to this day - she plays around, eats normally, uses the litterbox like she always did, no balance issues etc. Then around the middle of August, my boyfriend saved another kitten off the streets (we did everything by protocol - got it to the vet, quarantined, introduced it after vaccination to the other cats etc.), but Panpan's eye kept twitching throughout the whole time. The kitten is playful but very friendly, and the two adult cats have completely accepted him.
At one point, I brought her to the vet - disclaimer: we live in Shenzhen, China, and finding a good vet that doesn't want to make money off your cat is HARD, also finding someone who speaks English is the next big issue - who did some tests but couldn't find anything, also keep in mind that whenever we take her out of the apartment, her eye gets instantly better. Her eye pressure and cornea were perfectly fine. We put a collar on her so she wouldn't scratch her eye and kept watching. Then one day, we came home from work and her whole eye had flared up and was very watery and swollen. We took her to the vet downstairs of our place, even though they don't speak English (I made do with my Chinese...). The same day we had a trip booked out of town and left her in the care of the vet over the days - they did virus and infection tests and said she has pink eye. When we picked her up 5 days later she had gotten injections, pills, and eye drops and we were told she was fine but should continue the eye drops for a few days. Everything seemed fine, but then one night we came home from work and her eye was even worse than before. We took her down again, and the doctor said that she had a virus that the test didn't show. It will never go away and we need to make sure she has a clean environment and need to boost her immune system because that virus is dormant and flares up when her immunity is low. We were given more eye drops and an ointment - the vet told me in Chinese to give that like toothpaste (literally making the movement of brushing his teeth), but two days later when my boyfriend brought her for another round of injections (she got another five...), they told him that it is for the eyes. So clearly the vet gave me false information and when I asked them about it they blamed it on me and my Chinese being too bad to understand them (which is a whole other story but showed me they had no clue what to do and I vowed to never go back to them again).
We still proceeded with the eye drops and ointment. We also cleaned out the ACs in our house and bought an air purifier. We constantly clean the floor from dust and dirt. I also have been mixing some nutritional paste into her wet food to boost her immune system. And NOTHING helps. So we went back to the first English-speaking vet, who examined her and couldn't find anything either. This woman said it might be possible that she has an allergy but referred us to an "eye expert" across town and said this doctor should take a look first before we try the allergy-related treatment. This expert (again, not an English speaker) did the same tests with her and could not find anything either (which I have been saying all the time to them but I feel like nobody ever listens to me). So she gave us another round of eye drops (one I had to buy at a normal pharmacy, so it is a medicine for humans?) and more pills (3.5 pills a day). It worked well for the first two days and we dared to take off the collar. But yesterday, I saw that she has a weird film over her eye and now the area under her eye is swollen and the skin around it is a little red, just like always. Now the doctor is telling me to come back for a clean-up of her eye.
So this is where it is at. I don't want to put her through any more testing, and taking pills, and putting eyedrops and ointments that all don't seem to help. Also, all this medicine is really expensive here, we already paid around 600 USD (excluding the taxi drives). It is not so much about the money for me but it is frustrating to see Panpan suffer and nothing we do helps her. She is completely stressed out every time we come close to her and runs away. She hides whenever she can as well so we have to literally drag her out of her hideaways for her treatment. I don't want to keep doing this to her not knowing it will actually help her.
Does anyone have any idea what else we can do or has a similar experience and can share what helped in the end? I feel like I can go to all the vets in this city but everyone will just keep prescribing weird eye drops and the actual issue will never get addressed. I have attached two pictures for reference, the first one from yesterday and the second one from a few weeks ago after her first treatment when the eye was really bad. Usually, her eye is like this but less severe, slightly swollen, and a bit watery. You see its both eyes, so it is definitely not an issue of just one eye. It is really strange. And I am getting more and more desperate each day, I am not going to lie.
I stumbled across this forum and went deep down to see if someone has had similar issues and posted something about it, but I couldn't find anything and I am really desperate. Also bear with me please, it is quite a long story, but I don't know how to keep it shorter and what info might be important or not...
My cat Panpan is about 1.5 years old and around the beginning of August, we started to notice that her eye keeps twitching. At this point there was another cat in the household (around the same age) and they are very playful together so we thought she just hit her head or her eye is a bit irritated. However, it didn't stop. Also, one day the right eye would twitch, a few days later it would be the other eye. Her usual behavior is normal to this day - she plays around, eats normally, uses the litterbox like she always did, no balance issues etc. Then around the middle of August, my boyfriend saved another kitten off the streets (we did everything by protocol - got it to the vet, quarantined, introduced it after vaccination to the other cats etc.), but Panpan's eye kept twitching throughout the whole time. The kitten is playful but very friendly, and the two adult cats have completely accepted him.
At one point, I brought her to the vet - disclaimer: we live in Shenzhen, China, and finding a good vet that doesn't want to make money off your cat is HARD, also finding someone who speaks English is the next big issue - who did some tests but couldn't find anything, also keep in mind that whenever we take her out of the apartment, her eye gets instantly better. Her eye pressure and cornea were perfectly fine. We put a collar on her so she wouldn't scratch her eye and kept watching. Then one day, we came home from work and her whole eye had flared up and was very watery and swollen. We took her to the vet downstairs of our place, even though they don't speak English (I made do with my Chinese...). The same day we had a trip booked out of town and left her in the care of the vet over the days - they did virus and infection tests and said she has pink eye. When we picked her up 5 days later she had gotten injections, pills, and eye drops and we were told she was fine but should continue the eye drops for a few days. Everything seemed fine, but then one night we came home from work and her eye was even worse than before. We took her down again, and the doctor said that she had a virus that the test didn't show. It will never go away and we need to make sure she has a clean environment and need to boost her immune system because that virus is dormant and flares up when her immunity is low. We were given more eye drops and an ointment - the vet told me in Chinese to give that like toothpaste (literally making the movement of brushing his teeth), but two days later when my boyfriend brought her for another round of injections (she got another five...), they told him that it is for the eyes. So clearly the vet gave me false information and when I asked them about it they blamed it on me and my Chinese being too bad to understand them (which is a whole other story but showed me they had no clue what to do and I vowed to never go back to them again).
We still proceeded with the eye drops and ointment. We also cleaned out the ACs in our house and bought an air purifier. We constantly clean the floor from dust and dirt. I also have been mixing some nutritional paste into her wet food to boost her immune system. And NOTHING helps. So we went back to the first English-speaking vet, who examined her and couldn't find anything either. This woman said it might be possible that she has an allergy but referred us to an "eye expert" across town and said this doctor should take a look first before we try the allergy-related treatment. This expert (again, not an English speaker) did the same tests with her and could not find anything either (which I have been saying all the time to them but I feel like nobody ever listens to me). So she gave us another round of eye drops (one I had to buy at a normal pharmacy, so it is a medicine for humans?) and more pills (3.5 pills a day). It worked well for the first two days and we dared to take off the collar. But yesterday, I saw that she has a weird film over her eye and now the area under her eye is swollen and the skin around it is a little red, just like always. Now the doctor is telling me to come back for a clean-up of her eye.
So this is where it is at. I don't want to put her through any more testing, and taking pills, and putting eyedrops and ointments that all don't seem to help. Also, all this medicine is really expensive here, we already paid around 600 USD (excluding the taxi drives). It is not so much about the money for me but it is frustrating to see Panpan suffer and nothing we do helps her. She is completely stressed out every time we come close to her and runs away. She hides whenever she can as well so we have to literally drag her out of her hideaways for her treatment. I don't want to keep doing this to her not knowing it will actually help her.
Does anyone have any idea what else we can do or has a similar experience and can share what helped in the end? I feel like I can go to all the vets in this city but everyone will just keep prescribing weird eye drops and the actual issue will never get addressed. I have attached two pictures for reference, the first one from yesterday and the second one from a few weeks ago after her first treatment when the eye was really bad. Usually, her eye is like this but less severe, slightly swollen, and a bit watery. You see its both eyes, so it is definitely not an issue of just one eye. It is really strange. And I am getting more and more desperate each day, I am not going to lie.
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