What can I get over the counter to help kittens eyes that are stuck shut with puss.?

Question

I'm caring for feral kittens and have cleaned their eyes twice now, several have puss and are glued shut. I use warm water but think they need something stronger. I don't want them to go blind and can't afford to take them to a vet, let alone the momma letting me take them! They appear to be healthy otherwise.

Answer 1

Is the kitten younger than 2 weeks of age? Kittens eyes are closed until 2 weeks- DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPEN THEIR EYES. If they are older than that, take them to the vet because it can be an infection.
Also, you say the mom- are you letting her take care of them? She needs to care for them because she knows best and will feed them until they can be weaned onto solid food at around 4 weeks of age.

Answer 2

The kitten has severe upper respiratory infection which can be simply treated with a visit to a vet. The appropriate antibiotic will be prescribed and soon she'll be a healthy kitten again. Don't pick the discharge from her eye, you could injure her eye. Use a warm damp cloth to moisten the closed eyelid and genlty wipe the discharge away. Do not use the wash cloth again, so you may want to use something you can throw away. URI is very contagious to the others, so make sure to wash your hands before handling any of the other kittens. Try to keep the sick kitten secluded from the others, they seem ok now but it doesn't take long for the others to show signs of an URI. Sneezing is the first sign, accompanied by eye discharge or nasal discharge. You may wind up treating all the kittens so let the vet know you have other kittens at home whereby he can give you an adequate amount to treat them all. BTW if they haven't already, the kittens should be getting their feline distemper shots. And if they're at least four months old they should have their rabies shots too.

Answer 3

It may be the herpes virus (or the calci virus). If it's the herpes virus that is easily treatable with 250mg of powdered lysine per day on the food, for a week. You should see results in 3 days.

If it's the calci virus, they'll need an ointment from the vet.

We use the lysine for our FIV male, he's got runny eyes and goopy stuff like that occasionally and it clears them right up. Lysine is ok for cats, it won't overdose, the body excretes what it can't use. The pills can be crushed with the back of a spoon and the powder put over dry or wet food. It doesn't have a taste to it so they eat it ok. A bottle of generic is $4 and has 60 pills. Don't get the gel caps, it tastes awful. Lysine is also called L-Lysine also, it's in the vitamin section. Works on cold sores on us too.

Keep cleaning the eyes with warm water and a wash cloth, I had to do that with our guy a few times a day till the lysine kicked in.

Answer 4

Lipton Iced Tea Bags (or any other black tea)

There's something in them called "tannin" (sp) that cures pink eye in cats. DON'T WORRY. Cats carry pinkeye on them all the time and get it quite often.

Anyhoo.. what you would do is act as if you're making a cup of tea,, heat the cup of water for 1-2 min.. then put the bag in for 5 min.. let bag cool till just barely warm. Now you can either hold a bag to each eye (this will take more than one person most likely) for 5 minutes OR you can put a few drops of the tea (BE SURE TEA IS COOLED DOWN!) in each of their eyes OR on a rag and wipe down their eyes. You may have to do this every 2 hours depending on how bad it is. This is a fast and effective way to kill the pink eye virus. Be sure you constantly wash your hands so you don't catch it!!!!

Answer 5

It's actually feline distemper, which is not as bad as dogs with distemper. What I did with my three stray kittens is I took a clean piece of paper toweling and wet it with warm water and cleaned them every time they got goo in them. Eventually they cleared up. Normally the mama cat will lick them clean. If you're not comfortable with that then I would call the vet.

Oh, and make sure you use a clean paper towel or cotton ball for each kitten and then throw them away.

Good Luck!

Answer 6

Going to the vet is best, but until you can get them there, take a very soft washcloth, warm water and wash their eyes off....... keep doing that until the gunk is gone...... they need some drops from the vet..... so get them cleaned up, then call the vet..... we have kittens now too.......and we clean their eyes everyday....... and they are looking so much better.......

Answer 7

Kittens usually have puss in their eyes, but their moms lick their faces all the time. Just keep cleaning the puss out with a warm, wet, washcloth.

Answer 8

You can use 1 part tearless/baby shampoo to 20 parts water ans apply that with either a wet cloth or even cotton balls/q-tips. Then rinse with just water the same way. We did this for our kittens and it cleared up after a couple days. Good luck!

Answer 9

I don't know where I read this but I heard that if you take milk on a cotton swab you can remove gunk from eyes without harming them. The milk has a mild acid, lactic acid which dissolved the matter. I think Mothers used to do that to their babies who developed styes but that was a long time ago, hey I am over fifty., have not heard of styes of eye matter for a long time.
If that does not work I would use a mild oil like olive oil though I have not tried this but it will not do any harm

Answer 10

this is a common ailment with kittens...fist keep sponging it off with the warm water 2-3 times daily and then use some triple antibiotic on their eyes...make sure you get it inside the eyelids and on the eyeball...it will take several days to heal. make sure that it doesn't have the painkiller in it (some antibiotics do) and good luck