Betty went blind overnight. Pupils like black saucers, vet says high blood pressure. Has anyone's cat got their sight back?

Been reading this forum for months since Betty started slowing down, never posted. Posting now because I'm sat in the kitchen watching her bump along the skirting board and I don't quite know what to do with myself.

Betty is 15. Saturday she was normal. Sunday morning she misjudged the jump onto the windowsill, which I laughed at, fool that I am. By Monday she was walking into the door frame and her eyes looked WRONG, pupils huge and black like saucers, didn't shrink even in the bright kitchen. Rang the vet first thing and they said come in immediately, which frightened me more than anything.

Upshot: her blood pressure was, in the vet's words, "about as high as the machine goes." The retinas at the back of her eyes have detached, which is why she can't see. She's started on a daily tablet and we go back Thursday for another pressure check. The vet was kind but careful, said the pressure itself should come down quickly, the eyes are less certain. Two questions for anyone who's had this. One, did anyone's cat actually get their sight back? Two, how did I miss this? I watch that cat like a hawk. There was NOTHING, and then there was Sunday.

Oh Malcolm, straight to the second question because I can hear the guilt from here: you missed it because there is nothing to see. High blood pressure in cats doesn't show until something breaks, that's the horrible design flaw. You did the thing that mattered, you rang first thing Monday instead of waiting a week.

When Smudge's brother was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid a few years back, the vet explained the two often travel together and took his blood pressure at every single recheck afterwards, which at the time I thought was money-spinning and now understand completely. Reading the site's piece on hyperthyroidism in cats is actually how I learned the pressure link myself. Worth asking Thursday whether Betty's thyroid and kidneys have been checked, since the pressure usually rides in on the back of one of those.

This thread is exactly why I'm glad this forum exists. Our 16 year old was diagnosed with early kidney disease last autumn (I've written about it in the water bowl thread), and at her spring recheck I asked for a blood pressure check because the vet had mentioned kidneys can push it up. It was creeping, not crisis level, and she went on a daily tablet there and then. Her eyes are fine. Reading your post I've gone quite cold thinking about what the alternative timeline looked like.

So for anyone lurking with an older cat, especially a kidney or thyroid cat: the asking is the whole game. It took five extra minutes.

Adding "blood pressure" to Willow's recheck list right now, she's the kidney-changes girl from the water bowl thread so apparently I'm exactly the target audience for this warning.

Daft question maybe, but how do they even take a cat's blood pressure? I can't picture Willow tolerating the arm cuff thing, she files a formal complaint about having her ears looked at.

Malcolm R. said:

did anyone's cat actually get their sight back?

Malcolm, I'm sorry you and Betty are going through this, and I want to answer honestly rather than kindly. Sudden blindness with widely dilated pupils in an old cat is high blood pressure until proven otherwise, and it's one of the true same-day emergencies in older cats, because the window matters: retinas that have only partly detached, caught within a day or two, can settle back and recover useful vision once the pressure is controlled. Fully detached retinas that have been down for days usually don't, though some cats recover light and shadow. Betty may surprise you, but I'd want you prepared for the likely version. The medication side is genuinely the good news, the pressure itself usually comes down well on a daily tablet, and controlling it protects everything else hypertension quietly damages, the kidneys, heart, and brain included.

On causes, which is Thursday's real agenda: most feline hypertension is secondary, with chronic kidney disease the most common driver and an overactive thyroid next (smudgesmum's vet had it exactly right that the two travel together), and roughly one cat in five has high pressure with no underlying disease found at all. So bloods and urine alongside the pressure rechecks are standard, not upselling. two_tabbies, measuring is gentler than you'd imagine: a small inflatable cuff on the foreleg or tail and a Doppler probe that lets us hear the pulse, done in a quiet room before anything else stressful. We discard the first reading and average several, because cats do "white coat syndrome" better than any species on earth, vets call it situational hypertension, and it's precisely why one high reading in a stressed cat isn't a diagnosis, while high readings PLUS eye damage like Betty's is. As a working shorthand, persistently over about 160 systolic gets our attention and over 180 puts the eyes, brain, and kidneys in real danger. It's also why pressure checks are part of the standard screen for cats over about 11, the site's guide to senior cat vet checkups sets out what gets checked and when.

And to your "how did I miss it": you didn't miss anything visible. There's a reason the condition's nickname in the textbooks is the silent killer. Blind cats, for what it's worth, remap a familiar house astonishingly fast on whiskers and routine. Keep the furniture where it is, keep food, water, and trays where they were, and let Betty rebuild her map. Her vet knows her case; none of this replaces Thursday's conversation.

Promised an update. Pressure is controlled, tablet in a morsel of chicken every morning, she took the whole business better than I did. Bloods found early kidney disease underneath it all, so she's on the special food now and we recheck every three months.

Her sight didn't come back, or not properly. She tracks the light from the hallway sometimes and turns her face to the window, so perhaps shadows. But Dr Whitfield was right about the map. Six weeks on she does the whole house at a confident trot, found the sunbeam on the landing yesterday by some feline sonar I can't explain, and told me off in the usual terms when dinner ran late. I moved a dining chair on Tuesday and put it back after one look at her. The house belongs to her map now. We manage.