Answer

The runny eye and sneezing all the time is not normal nor typical, so I disagree with her. What is normal or typical is to NOT see these things.

The problem with cases like this is differentiating between the possible causes. There are two main underlying diseases that can be causing these signs: allergy and herpesviral upper respitory infection, both of which, can be clincially indistinguishable.

Chronic allergies can lead to inflammation in eyes and sinuses, known respectively as conjunctivitis and sinusitis. Herpes virus in cats can also lead to chroni conjunctivitis and sinusitis. One way to help differentiate between the two is the presence of fever - herpes virus sometimes causes fever, while allergic sinusitis/conjunctivitis, typically does not. Therefore, if there were a fever, I would definately gear my treatment toward treating herpes virus.

If no fever, it still would be a good idea to target management of herpes virus. I have heard of Garasone drops, which are nothing more than antibiotic/cortisone topical ophthalmic preparation meant to treat allergic eyes (antibiotic to quell infection, cortisone to sooth allergically stimulated inflammation). If this were simply allergy, I would have expected these drops to have helped the patient eyes. For information on herpes virus and how to treat it, please refer this article I wrote on the topic:

http://www.web-dvm.net/herpes.html

If you have no success in targeting herpes management, then the focus can be redirected back to allergic causes. In tue allergic cases, many feline patients respoind nicely to regular dosing with antihistamine, Chlorpheniramine.

Edited by Roger L. Welton, DVM on 6/25/2009 at 3:09 AM