While outside this morning I was surprised to see one of my cats had a clouded eyeball. I see him pretty regularly, like at least once every other day in nice weather when he’s outside a lot, but when he’s inside he’s generally asleep somewhere. How quickly can a cataract develop? A friend mentioned one of her cats having a clouded eyeball from an infection, which seems like it would happen faster, but from the limited amount of looking he let me do I don’t see any sign of swelling in or around the eye and it’s not weepy or partially closed.

Tuesday I’m going to make a vet appointment for the soonest they can get me in, but it might be a week or more. Other than evidence that it’s bothering him, is there anything I should keep an eye out for?

Well?  How's your cat?

I have five cats.  I'm interested in the results.

My herd of cats is fairly healthy.  Never heard of a cat with cataracts.

Here are three of them.

He’s doing fine, the eye isn’t in any danger. It just doesn’t do much more than let him tell light from dark. I can’t get him in at the vet until next month, one of the bad things about living out in the middle of nowhere.

I had a dog that developed a cloudy eye kinda randomly. Turned out he had some kind of ulcer or damage to the surface of his eye. You could kinda see little tiny pits if you looked just right at the surface of his eye.
This also caused his tear ducts to stop working correctly leading to the cloudy eye. Got some medicine and eye drops and things improved pretty quick.

You might not want to wait if you can. I was told that issues like my old dogs are compounding. The longer you wait the more damage that occurs.

I’ve had a cat develop a corneal ulcer before, she couldn’t keep the eye open and it wept constantly. This isn’t causing him any pain or discomfort. If I could get him to the vet today I would because he needs his annual checkup & shots, but there are 3 in the whole county and 2 of them I don’t like. My normal one (almost 2 hours away) is booked solid over a month out.