Squinting Kitten

[Spyro87]

As the title says, I have a squinting kitten.. (the Skyrim player in me sooo wanted to title it Winking Kitten and couldn't help thinking of the winking sleeve Inn lol)

But yeh, little Corey has an oddly winking eye, there's no odd coloured discharge coming from it, but we can see his 3rd eyelid is on show. He has spent much of today sleeping, but so has Merlin, we assume this is the heat.
There's been a little watering action going on from his eye.

He doesn't seem to be rubbing it with paws or on furniture, and mostly it doesn't seem to be irritating him at all, he's just squinting and it's a little red.

Any ideas? Obviously I know getting him to a vet is the best course of action, but as it's Sunday tomorrow I'm going to struggle with that until Monday.
So far I've been doing what I'd do for one of my human babies and wiping his eye regularly with warm water to help keep it clean.

Picture attached.
Any advice to help my little guy in the meantime would be awesome

 

[duckpond]

vet visit Monday will be a good idea. could be allergies, cold, infection, something in the eye, any number of things. Vet should be able to tell. Let us know what you find out. Hopefully he wont feel too bad

 

[mservant]

Gentle wash over the eye like you are doing is probably best for now, until you can get him to the vet on Monday. If there's no sign of yellow or discoloured stickiness in or around the eye he might be happier if you didn't bathe it as, depending on the cause, it might just cause him more pain or discomfort.

I hope you can get to see a vet early on Monday so as to find out what the cause is and get your little guy better. Please, do try to let us know how things go. He looks super-cute and it would be great to hear he doesn't need to sleep and put all his energy in to getting better and is back to racing about like a regular kitten again.

 

[Spyro87]

So far it seems the bathing has been working wonders. His eye looked so much better over the weekend that we've decided to keep an eye on it and not rush him to the vets.
There's still no evidence of infection, so we're thinking he just had a bit of fluff or hair from my other cat in his eye that upset it.
His squinting has gone but we're continuing to bathe it a little just to keep on top of it.

We were really encouraged by the progress with his eye not to involve a vet, but obviously had it worsened or not shown any signs of improvement by Monday he'd have been straight off to see one as that's the responsible thing to do with kittens and eyes.

I'll update of anything else happens with him, poor little fur baby.

 

[mservant]

Thank you for the update. It's great that his eye is looking better.

Keep a lookout for any other signs of him being under the weather, like little coughs and sneezes. It could be a virus like feline herpes which can affect the eyes: it's more unusual than upper respiratory tract but a runny eye without infection and resting more than usual can be signs of this. If it is it is best to see your vet as soon as possible when you next notice the eye watering as the virus causes tiny ulcers on the eye which are very painful and can also cause long term damage to sight if they become infected with bacteria and not treated.
Ocular (eye) Herpes In Cats

It is possible for cats and kittens to have this virus even if they have been vaccinated against it - this is because they can contract it at birth and the vaccine is then too late to prevent the infection. My vets think this is likely to be how Mouse contracted it, and the likely herpes diagnosis was made because of the type of ulcers he had on his eye.