My cat saved my eyeball this morning. At the risk of hy-purrr-bole, allow me to explain.
Last Saturday, my aggressively social Bengal-Mix was nowhere to be found. When I located him in a new “kitty fort,” initially I thought it was cute that he wanted to hide out there in the morning, until I realized he had streaks of “gunk” streaming out of both his little eyes.
I’m sure a better “cat-parent” would have at least three vets on speed dial who could have seen him on a moment’s notice on a Saturday morning – but my busiest workdays are Saturday and Sunday and I have mostly healthy cats – so I don’t have those close personal ties with Cat Doctors who could accommodate me.
Enter “Dr. Google” – because SOME medical advice on a Saturday is better than NO medical advice until Monday. Based on a review of symptoms and the color of “eye-sludge,” it seemed most likely to be a “bacterial infection” – perhaps feline conjunctivitis. Dr. Google assured me this was treatable by a vet with an antibacterial ointment.
Antibacterial ointment??? Like the Neosporin knock-off in my medical cabinet? My poor kitty seemed unable to open his little goopy eyes, so I gently cleaned the area and very, very gently applied first-aid ointment around his squinty little slits.
I didn’t expect much and certainly not the reaction I got – the first being – he held still for the procedure and did NOT fight me, which told me he was MISERABLE enough to not even try to dodge treatment.
The second reaction was moments later when he opened his eyes wide like one of the blind men Jesus healed and just looked and looked at me like I’d done some kind of opposable thumb magic on him.
I was thrilled that he seemed thrilled. He WAS so thrilled in fact that he sought me out two times later the same day to get more medicine in his eyes.
By the next morning, there was only a tiny bit of goop and I only treated him twice the following day. The third morning (Monday) he was goop-free and I treated him once just to be “safe.” Of course, by then, he no longer wanted “medicine” and pulled away as soon as I was done.
Fast forward to this morning at 5am. I woke up and made my obligatory trip to the bathroom that I make if I wake up at any time in the middle of the night or too early in the morning to justify getting out of bed.
But I realized it was not nature calling that had disturbed my slumber. It was an unholy pain in my right eye. It kind of felt like something had crawled under my eyelid to excavate my cornea while I was sleeping. I tried to go back to bed thinking I could cry and sleep it off. I was wrong. The pain was persistent and intense.
I thought maybe it was just an eyelash that had worked its way under my lid. I got a little cup from the kitchen to rinse my eye out with.
No relief.
My eye did not want to open – I had to pry it with my fingers to take a look – not a terribly productive look because when one of your eyes is involuntarily squinting shut and flooding itself with tears, the other eye doesn’t want to feel left out apparently, and was also squinty, puffy and tearing, although there was no pain or irritation in that eye. It was just very sympathetic to its neighbor on the other side of my schnozz.
I was too damn tired to panic – even tho I WAS considering it as an option. Five am. No one in my life was awake at such an ungodly hour. I don’t even have a personal HUMAN doctor on speed-dial – although I have a very good nurse friend, she’s not really well-versed in ophthalmology. I certainly was in no shape to drive myself to an ER given the determination of my left eye to tear and squint in solidarity of my right… (did they form a union behind my back???)
Then I thought about my little Bengal boy and the way he acted like I’d taken all his pain away with that first dose of Generi-Sporin…
Why not?
It certainly beat doing nothing. In that moment it hardly seemed like anything could possibly make my situation any worse…
***********DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME – ALWAYS SEEK PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE – PREFURRRRABLY NOT FROM DR GOOGLE OR A ROBUST NEARLY 7-YEAR OLD TABBY CAT********
The relief was instant. The excessive tearing stopped almost immediately. The puffiness started to subside and finally my Left eye remembered there was nothing wrong with it long enough to take a gander. I didn’t see any major redness (oddly) nor did I see a mini spider trying to build a web in my iris. I may never know what was wrong this morning. I went back to sleep and got up an hour later when my alarm reminded at me at 6:30 that I had plans to go check out a local gym. My right eye was still a little tender. I remembered how my cat had followed me into the bathroom a couple hours after his first dose and refused to leave until I put some more medicine in his eyes.
Repeat.
I drove to the gym – no problem.
Home. Another dose.
Almost all the pain is gone – it’s just a little tender like an over-worked muscle. So why did I put “Horse Paste” in the subtitle of this story?
Thinking back to the desperation and panic that Covid caused, our “Public Health system” kinda left us in the lurch – like a discount veterinary clinic with no Saturday office hours.
Stay home. Isolate. Wait it out. If you get sicker, go to the hospital where 50% - 80% of people given Remdesivir and put on ventilators never came home.
Who the hell wanted to do that? Especially when Dr Google had stories from all across the world of people successfully recovering after using Hydroxychloroquine and or Ivermectin? If it was good enough for a frikkin horse or cow – WHY WOULDN’T someone at least TRY that over just sitting around and waiting for things to get worse – at 5am, with no ride to an ER, in excruciating pain or fear?
“But Rev “– I hear you say – “Rip-off-Sporin was made for humans and you used in on your cat!” Yep. Yes. Indeed. And actually, the history of Ivermectin is the same. It was discovered to kill parasitic infection in humans and then was dosed for farm animals because it was so effective. To which the savvy media consumer replies, “You just said – it was an anti-PARASITIC!!! NOT an anti-VIRAL!!!” And I would 100% agree that qualifies as an “off-label” use of that drug. Just like how Bathroom Cabinet-Sporin is NOT approved for Feline Conjunctivitis or whatever the hell had crawled in my eyeball and was murdering my cornea at 5am this morning.
What I’m saying is when you’re up against it and you’re in pain, discomfort or fear – SOMETHING is almost ALWAYS better than NOTHING. And for somewhere between hundreds of thousands to millions of people, using “off-label” treatments worked.
What would you do if your cat had goopy eyes on a Saturday???
I use baby wipes to clean my dog's!