Sometimes when your cat goes to eat food their eyes for whatever reason start tearing up. Well, why is this exactly? lets go into some of the reason why this could happen.
Reasons Why Your Cats Eyes Tear Up After Eating
Cats eyes can tear up for a lot of reasons during eating. Some of these include:
Feline Herpes
If your cat has feline herpes this can cause upper respiratory symptoms and eye tearing. Treating this involves adding 125 mg of l-lycine to their water every day. This will stop the outbreaks from happening.
URI Virus
Another thing that can make your cats eyes water is an URI Virus. This is equivalent to the common cold that humans get but has different underlining causes. Some of these include:
- Feline calicivirus (FCV)
- Uncommon bacterial organisms
- Feline herpesvirus
- Chlamydia
Cats will typically catch this due to unsanitary conditions or immunosuppression and its very contagious. Treatment involves just waiting it out for 1-2 weeks and your cat should be good. If not and they experience more symptoms such as discharge from the eyes or nose I would take them to a vet to see what going on with them.
Blocked Tear Duct
This is a very common problem with flat faced breeds of cats. This can happen due to a variety of reasons including:
- Feline Herpesvirus: According to the Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Hospital this is the most common cause of blocked tear ducts in your cat eyes.
- Obstruction: Cats are constantly draining fluid through their tear ducts and anything solid like dust or pollen can build up and block the duct in their eyes.
- Poor Anatomy: Some cats can be born with very narrow tear ducts or your cat may be born with none of them at all.
- Tear Fluid Overproduction: Sometimes your cat might have this problem where their eyes produce fluid faster than it can drain it away. this can make your cats eyes very watery.
- Sealed Tear Ducts: Some cats can be born with this problem
- Inflammation/Infection: Swelling can cause narrowing and can be the culprit of your cats tear ducts closing up.
Luckily this isn’t a very severe condition but treating it depends on what is causing the blockage
Conjunctivitis
Conjunctivitis is the inflammation of the thin mucous membrane which can also make your cats eyes water unexpectedly. This will usually happen do to outside irritants like plants or dust. Most cats will experience this at some point of their lives and it goes away on its own over time.
Somatitis
Or feline chronic gingivo-stomatitis (FCGS) is a dental infection that causes severe inflammation in your cats entire mouth that can causes eye watering in your cat. This is something that you can’t treat on your own and even dentists have a hard time getting rid of it with a thorough cleaning at the vet. Its usually treated by tooth extraction surgery with 90% of cats being fully cured. Luckily this disease only effects 10% of cats.
Allergies
Cats can get allergies just like humans can. Dust, mites, mold, mildew, cleaning products, corn, gluten and many other things can also be a culprit of tearing eyes. Keeping your cat away from these things can help with your cats eye watering problem.
Treatment For Watery Eyes After Eating
Watery eyes in cats can get complicated with their causes so treating it depends on what the underlining cause is. The best way to know how to treat your cats problems is by going to a vet to see why your cat is experiencing the issues that they have.
