*Long review here*

My vet recommended these to me after my kitty was diagnosed with cat acne. I noticed she had some black dirt on her chin one day and started scratching at it, eventually that led to pustules of acne that I could tell were causing her pain. Fast forward, we end up at the vet with an antibiotic shot and a steroid shot to clean up her chin. Little did I know, cat acne IS a thing and it's caused by herpes in felines that over 80% of cats have! Crazy! My vet recommended one of these treats a day to help her autoimmune system fight herpes flare ups so she doesn't get acne anymore. Her chin has cleared up so much!

My now 14-yr old cat got the nasty upper respiratory (herpes) virus as a kitten and the shelter was going put her down. Luckily she was rescued by a local cat rescue agency and put for adoption. By the time she left the shelter the virus had permanently damaged one of her eyes. It typically is watery and clouded over but she's learned to live with it and really doesn't seem to bother her. What does bother her is the sneezing fits that come along with this nasty virus. These treats not only help with the watery eye, but they cut down on the sneezing WHEN GIVEN ON AN EMPTY STOMACH! My vet recommended them and I tried 2 or 4 per day but they did not seem to help at all, until I read in a blog somewhere that they are more effective given on an empty stomach. The difference was night and day. Luckily my cat loves the treats. I have to give 4 - 5 per day, otherwise they are not as effective against the sneezing. She gets 2 1/2 in the morning before her dry food, and the other 2 1/2 in the late afternoon after she wakes up from her afternoon nap! She still sneezes occasionally but it's nowhere near as frequent as before.

I have spent thousands on vet bills and too much on antibiotics (which can be harmful)which after some time stopped working. Our vet even suggested we put our cat to sleep because he has severe upper respiratory infection from time to time. I started looking online for ways to help him with supplements. Our vet suggested he take lysine when he has flare ups. I found out he needs this stuff everyday for the rest of his life. If I miss a couple days without the supplements he starts sneezing again. I usually give 2 pills everyday when he starts sneezing. I give one time in the morning and one in the night. My cat wont eat them even though I break them into smaller pieces so I have to smash it with a spoon until it becomes a powder. I then mix with 1/2 teaspoon of water until it is very smooth, I use a syringe and squirt a little at a time into my cats mouth. This stuff really works well and saves thousands on vets bills. When he is not sneezing and doing well I give only one pill once a day. Putting him in the bathroom when I shower also really helps. Make sure the water is very warm and just let him hang out in there. I hope this helps. :)

Our cat, Pumpkin, is a retired show cat. The breeder we adopted her from, never told us why she was retired. After having her for about a year, we found out she had herpes. Over the years the group in her ears and eyes got worse and within the last two years, she has become so congested in both her chest as well as nasal passages. She is so bad that it makes it difficult to hold her and pet her because she sneezes all over you. After many trips to the veterinarians office, as well as medicine and shots to treat, we found out about lysine. After doing a little research we found Vetri-lysine plus. Within two weeks we noticed an improvement, and have been giving Pumpkin two pills a day. From the moment we open the bag, Pumpkin and her two sisters are eagerly waiting. The chews have a meat smell they go bananas for, and everyone wants to eat Pumpkin's treats! If your cat has herpes, I believe this product may help--it sure helped Pumpkin! After four weeks of use, my only hope is that she continues to improve!
Clearly she is not interested in having her picture taken right now. :D

I have five cats and at least three of them have eye herpes. One of them is a 10.5-month-old rescued kitten I got last month. I am fairly certain he had eye herpes before I brought him home, but at any rate, there is a bit of kitty stress in my household right now as he integrates himself, so one of my other eye herpes cats may have been shedding the virus and infected him. Thankfully, he does not have ulcers, but he has clear eye discharge and sometimes sneezes. So I asked my vet about lysine options.

Please note: this has chicken-based flavoring in it so it will not work for cats with chicken allergies and/or inflammatory bowel disease. (If you have a cat like that, your best bet is buying lysine tablets for humans and crushing them, then suspending them in liquid, drawing up in a syringe, and administering that way. Human lysine tablets are a bit too big for a cat to swallow.) If your cat is able to have most treats and such, these chews are a far better (as in, more pleasant for the cat and easier to administer) option.

Anyway, the herpes virus requires a lot of the amino acid arginine (which has a long carbon side chain and a positively-charged nitrogen-containing group on the end) for replication. Giving lysine (which also has a long carbon side chain and a different positively-charged nitrogen-containing group on the end) in large amounts means lysine is taken up more by the cell machinery producing viral proteins. Only, when lysine is incorporated into viral proteins in place of arginine, the proteins don't fold properly and don't function as well (or at all). (This is true for human herpesviruses as well, so if you tend to get cold sores, take lysine tablets. It is an amino acid that you would need anyway. Just follow dosing instructions on the bottle.)

So, in order to get my kitten's eye herpes under control before he starts scratching at his eyes or something, I am giving him this. He's been on it for a few days and it seems to be helping. He has less eye discharge and I haven't heard the sneezing for awhile. He's also not scratching at his eyes. He's still skittish so I just throw a treat or two on the floor in the morning before feeding him. I do this when he's hungry so I know he will eat these. He likes them and doesn't have much trouble chewing/eating them. (They're what I would call "semi-moist." They don't have a strong smell.)

These are not causing my kitten any digestive upsets, which of course I'm very happy about. The bag is resealable to preserve freshness.

If your cat is walking around with one eye closed or you see the third eyelid covering a large portion of the eye, there is probably an ulcer. You will need to take your cat to the vet and get a fluorescein stain and some antibiotic drops or ointment. This product will not cure ulcers. (I've seen the extremes of cat eyes damaged by eye herpes and you do not want to go there. It is expensive and requires many trips to the veterinary ophthalmologist.) Ulcers must be treated quickly and appropriately. But if your cat just has some discharge and sneezing and you have reason to believe s/he has eye herpes, these treats can help.

Anyway, I'm very happy that these are working. Nice to know I can get them from Amazon if my cats have issues in the future.