Cats third eyelid

[Ostagazuzulum]

My cats third eyelid has been up (I'm
Not sure if this is right terminology) for few days. I wasn't sure what it was but googled it tonight. I'll obviously get him to vets asap tomorrow or when I can get appointment.
He's not in pain that I can see, acting normally, eating, litter stuff seems normal. Not sleeping more than usual. He's about 11 years old.
Anyone experience of this?
Just so I'm prepared, is it going to be horrendously expensive vet fees. We have insurance so hopefully enough to cover? Will it be long term issue? Do I need to be worried?

Just one or both?

One could indicate eye irritation. Both could be a lot of things especially in an older cat but him acting normally is a good sign.

A visible nictitating membrane indicates conjunctivitis which can be caused by a variety of things. Are his eyes watering / is there any yellow, green or brownish discharge? Is he squinting or do his eyes look swollen?

Conjunctivitis is most often caused by an infection or an injury or foreign body in the eye. An infection can be viral (feline herpes, Calici virus), bacterial (Chlamydophila felis, Mycoplasma and several others) or fungal.

One of our kittens had really bad conjunctivitis just after moving in with us. We went to our usual (normally very competent) vet surgery who thought it was bacterial after examining his eyes and doing an eye swab that came back negative for everything except for Mycoplasma. They prescribed an eye cream that we had to administer about 4 times a day, but our kittens eyes only kept getting worse. We were so worried about permanent damage to his eyesight that we went to an eye specialist who had far superior equipment and could see from just looking at the lesions in his eyes under the microscope that he had herpes (apparently eye swabs with false negatives are very common). It took four weeks of eyedrops five times a day to sort until his eyes were completely healed and was a massive pain for everyone involved.

Sorry for boring you with a long story, but my advice would be to make sure you see an eye specialist / a clinic that is well equipped for eye issues from the start. The eye specialist wasn't massively more expensive and we wasted a lot of time and money on the initial ineffective treatment from our usual vet who just didn't have the necessary expertise in this particular area. It only prolonged the ordeal for our poor kitten as well. With any future eye issue I'd always see a specialst straight away.

The fact that your cat eats well / is his usual self otherwise doesn't mean much, tbh. Our kitten spent all day playing with his brother, zooming around the house and had a huge appetite even when his eyes were horrendously swollen and weeping like crazy. Cats are experts at masking discomfort. In our case the eye specialist said that the infection was likely to be quite painful for our kitten, but you'd never have guessed from just looking at him.

Thank you both, it's in both eyes and there is no weeping or discharge.

Happened to my cat, it was a type of worm

One dose worming treatment fixed it

and I paid £82 for a vet to tell me that

Hi Osta.
My cat had this last year. He's a wanderer and when I picked him up from one of his several homes, I noticed both eyelids were up.Took him to the vet that day. She said it was Hawes syndrome. He has Calicivirus as a result of untreated cat flu as a kitten. He's a street boy we rescued at 2 years old.
The next day he started with awful diarrhoea, which lasted for 4 weeks. He had picked up a virus called Clostridium Perfringens. Probably due to scavenging.It was awful, but he comppletely recovered although his 3rd eyelids were up for weeks.
Good luck hope your cat is ok

Sorry forgot to say, he was given Panacur a strong wormer too.
2 days later he started with cat flu on top of everything else.. I thought we were going to lose him at the time. Cost a fortune too.