Please Help! My Kitten has FHV!
 

About a week and half ago, my kitten(about 2 months old) seemed to have a slightly swollen eye, past experience told me I should isolate the kitten(litter of five), so I did. I carefully observed the kitten's eye for a couple days but it progressively got worse, so I decided to take him to the vet. The vet had diagnosed him with feline herpes virus and he gave us some eyedrops(ciloxan, two drops in affected eye, twice a day) and antibiotics(clavamox, .2mL twice a day), which I attentively treated the kitten with. So for the past week, I've cleaned the affected with saline, and treated him, but he hasn't gotten any better, in fact, I think he may have gotten worse. The kitten keeps rubbing his eye so I made a cone for him, but the kitten's eye right now is swollen, somewhat bald , and has hard brown skin covering the the skin around this eye.

Please help save my kitten, I can't afford another trip to the vet.

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I would apply warm compresses to the area, and continue with the antibiotics and drops. You can get an immune system booster supplement from a health food store, it's called L-lysine and usually comes in powder or capsule form. If you get the capsules, make sure they are plain L-Lysine, 500mg. Just break them open and give him half a capsule mixed with wet food morning and night. My FHV cat seems to do well on it, his eye is still weepy but never swollen or crusty.

Oh Felix that is one cute kitty and I can see why you are alarmed...that eye looks painful :(

I have two cats that I adopted last year from the SPCA and both came home with URI/RHINO/FHV. At one point I was worried that sweet Ziggy wasn't going to make it he was so sick so I understand your concern.

I joined the Yahoo group below and received fantastic support and information there. Perhaps it is worth taking a look...

[url]http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/felineherpes/[/url]

Good luck...it doesn't clear up fast and it sounds like you are keeping a good eye on the problem. Please keep us posted! :goodvibes:

Here is the thread with pics of poor Ziggy's eyes (it gets confusing because his name was changed from Ziggy to Rascal back to Ziggy...SO couldn't get it straight LOL)

[url]http://www.pets.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=66509[/url]