What causes persistent eye discharge and swelling in cats?
Persistent eye accumulation and swollen skin around a cat's eye can cause ongoing worry for owners when standard explanations feel unhelpful. This makes it difficult to know how to help the cat or when to seek further care when symptoms do not go away.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Wiping the eye goobers clean when flare-ups happen
- 2Watching for secondary infection symptoms like sniffles, sneezing, coughing, or lethargy
- 3Keeping an eye on it to see if it heals on its own
- 4Waiting to see if anything changes before taking the cat to the vet
- 5Using a low dose human clotrimazole cream and sulfur baths recommended by others
- 6Visiting the veterinarian for extensive testing including bloodwork, x-rays, eye exams, and fecal exams
- 7wiping the cat's eyes with a warm washcloth
- 8taking the cat to the veterinarian for an examination and prescription eye drops
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Her eyes have been very watery, she rubs them since last night but my husband and I don’t see anything in them?”source ↗
“All her bloodwork is fine. I’ve spent $1100 on her since Sunday.. but what the heck!! Everything is perfectly fine and her eyes have been this way since Saturday. Off and on.. usually shows worse when she’s laying down or tilting her head in different positions.”source ↗
“Seeking advice on what to do about my cat’s eyes- she’s had this accumulation (circled in red, healthy eye shown in picture 2 for reference) on the inner corner of her left eye for over two months.”source ↗
“I’m just worried that it’s not going away and seems to be getting bigger sometimes?”source ↗
“The skin over her left eye is slightly swollen and red.”source ↗
“Today I notice this, the little scar is always there she keep scratching herself, but it was not red nor swollen yesterday.”source ↗
“But I’m concerned”source ↗
“Ive noticed my cats eyes get all weird during autumn, I guess cats have bad allergies in autumn? I took her to vet and they said everything should be fine and gave me eye drops.”source ↗
“Okay, there are no vets open now, and the bald spots she kinda of had always been bald there, it’s the same on her other side, it’s just the swelling and pinks skin, there are not scaling or flaky skin on it.”source ↗