My 18 month old cat has a congenital tear duct absence on his left eye. We originally thought his duct had scarred over secondary to a herpes infection, but it turns out it just isn’t there at all. He had surgery last May in an attempt to open the duct, but it was unsuccessful. The only other surgical option is to essentially open his whole face up to create a new duct - I said “No, thank you!” to that one, as it was prohibitively expensive and a very risky microsurgery close to a lot of important facial and opthalmic nerves and vessels.
Anyway, since he has no duct he has constant tear overflow down his face, which creates a gross, wet environment that gets crusty and stained. I clean it up every day with a cotton ball and some soap, and apply some Neosporin to keep the crusties from forming and prevent infection.
The problem is the skin under his eye is just inflamed and painful from the crusting and constant tearing. I have tried just leaving it alone, but he gets a ton of crusty buildup quite quickly and then when I clean THAT up, the skin is even worse underneath.
Does anyone else have a cat/dog with this? What do you put under their eye to prevent the skin issues?
