In what has arisen as a supreme irony, it turns out that Tiger may be
allergic to my son's visiting girlfriend, who in turn is allergic to
Louis.

The vet asked what had changed in Tiger's environment before the
outbreak of conjunctivitis. All I could offer at the time is that the
weather had finally turned pleasant in Minnesota, and we'd opened the
windows.

After that, it dawned on me that the other major change was that my
son's girlfriend was visiting from LA (they met on the internet.. very
cool story all on its own.. and she's actually a pretty great person).

When this realization hit, I asked her to refrain from petting Tiger.
Within a day his eye had returned to normal, and the redness had
disappeared.

As a test, today we asked her to cuddle him (not difficult, since he's
a really loving cat). Sure enough, his eye started squinting late this
evening - though we held back from applying the steroid goo.

Maybe it's her shampoo, or pollen carried from southern california,
but it sure seems like there's some correlation between her contact
and Tiger's outbreaks.

How incredibly and sadly ironic.

BLink