Feline Overlord update from this morning. (When he broke normal “get up!” routine by instead climbing under the covers and just going to sleep himself.)

At lunch I went and checked on him. He was sitting in the middle of the living room - definitely not normal. His right eye was closed and tearing heavily. And he hadn’t eaten any food since last night.

So I called the cat hospital* and managed to hit an open appointment for a half four later. Not his normal doctor at the cat hospital, but one that has seen some of the other cats at one time or another.

Diagnosis is that he had a blood pressure spike that has also put excessive pressure in his eye. As a result there was some retinal bleeding and a partial glaucoma condition. (Which cats are generally not subject to, as compared to humans.) So he was in considerable pain and thus not happy.

Vet put some salve on the eye that numbed it a bit - mainly in order to examine it.

He’s home, sleeping and eating. We’ve adjusted the dosage on his blood pressure medication (temporarily doubling it), plus he’s getting eye drops (steroid, and also an antibiotic) 2-3 times a day for the rest of the week.

And there is a follow-up visit scheduled for Friday to see if things have improved. The vet thinks we caught it early enough that there might not be any permanent damage to his eyesight.

* - One advantage of living in a large city is specialized pet care. That the nearby Univ. of Penn has a very good veterinary department doesn’t hurt either. The cat sitter I get for trips via the one service is actually a grad student there and a very good fit for watching an older cat.