Cats eyes and matting fur...

Question
Dear Pati,
I was wondering if you could help me in anyway. My cat is about 12 years old and for the past few months has had a brown discharge that dries around the inside corner of her eyes. I regularly bathe her eyes but it keeps recurring. I am looking into taking her to the Vets but she hates being touched and seems to get very stressed from moving around alot. One other problem that i am concerned about is her matting. She seems to have a number of matts in her fur; with one large area being under her belly. When I have tried to look closer, it seems as though the matt goes right down to the skin and i dont want to attempt cutting them off myself. She seems to be limping too and am not sure as to whether it is due to the matting. To round it up, I'd just like to hear what you think could be the reason for this? Do you think it is her age? Or could it be some kind of illness? I hope to hear back from you soon
Kind regards
Lauren

Answer
Hi Lauren,

The discharge from the eyes may be due to the Feline Herpes Virus (you cannot catch it from her) that approximately 95% of cats harbor.  Sometimes outbreaks are caused by stress and the matting of her fur and subsequent pain from that may have caused an outbreak.  I know she doesn't like to be touched but you really need to get her to a professional groomer, a lot of pet stores have in house groomers now, to get those mats off.  Her limping is almost assuredly from the matting and its not going to go away by itself.  I agree you shouldn't try to get them off yourself but a professional groomer can get them off and thin her hair so it doesn't recur anytime soon.  You'll have to try to brush her, too, to keep them from coming back.  As far as the eye discharge the best thing to do is put L-lysine in her food, either wet or dry.  You can find it in your local store's vitamin aisle and grind up the pills or you can go to vetdepot.com and get some already in powder form.  I have several cats who routinely have outbreaks and the L-lysine works every time, some are on it full time.