In June, one of our cats gave birth to four kittens. I saw her hiding behind some bags and, being curious, I went after her to look. She meowed at me, upset that I was leaving, disturbed by my presence. I respected her wish and did not disturb her anymore, I just went to check if she was okay an hour later. My presence caused problems with the little eyes of three of the kittens. When they grew up, about 2 weeks later, and it was time for their eyes to open, all but one, I think the smallest, had their right eye closed with bad secretions. The big kitten even developed an edema (a swelling filled with water) that was half the size of its head.
Their eyes opened with difficulty, I mean the right one in all three kittens, and only a month after birth did they have normal eyes. The big kitten's edema also disappeared a few days later. The poor thing looks quite strange with half of her head swollen. It was obvious that it was from the eyes.
I have written about eye discharge here before.
And now let me explain the situation to you - the cat suffered a visual separation conflict - that is, she wanted not to see me, not to be disturbed by me anymore. The eyes close when you don't want to see. The same goes for swelling around the eyes. An article on this topic here. The conflict was taken over from the mother by three of the four kittens whose eyes opened much later than normal. The eldest kitten even developed edema, that is, a swelling filled with fluid in the eye, a sign that he took over the mother's strongest conflict. The role of the edema is to protect the affected organ during the healing process and it will gradually be eliminated. It was removed in about 3-4 days, the head shape returned to normal and the eye opened 2 weeks later.
All the kittens recovered and developed normally. We did nothing to them. Their mother cleaned them, then they learned to clean themselves. We only cleaned them once with some moistened cotton balls, but the eyes immediately closed back up and we decided to leave them alone.
Thank you, Dr. Hamer and good luck to everyone!
Geo


