The stains remained. Sophie stopped fighting them. She switched to a stainless steel water bowl (less bacteria), added a lysine supplement to his food (just in case), and accepted that her white Persian would always look like he’d been crying over a romance novel.
Mochi sneezed indignantly, spraying a fine mist of saline across the table. He looked affronted, as if to say, How dare you unclog my dignity. blocked tear ducts in cats
The vet, Dr. Lian, explained it simply. “Blocked tear ducts. In flat-faced cats like your Mochi, the nasolacrimal duct—the tiny drainpipe that carries tears from the eye to the nose—sometimes gets kinked or clogged. The tears can’t drain, so they spill over.” The stains remained
Sophie held her breath.
“Is it painful?” Sophie asked, stroking Mochi’s back as he purred on the exam table. Mochi sneezed indignantly, spraying a fine mist of
One afternoon, a neighbor came over and saw Mochi asleep in a sunbeam, his face streaked with brown.
And in a way, it was true. Mochi’s blocked tear ducts didn’t stop him from purring louder than any cat she’d known. They didn’t stop him from sprinting sideways across the living room at 3 a.m. They didn’t stop him from headbutting her coffee mug every single morning.