Swollen and red lips

My cat has swollen and very sore looking lips. I don’t think that she’s in a lot of pain but it just looks quite painful (I’ve attached a photo, it’s a little gruesome). I don’t know what’s doing this to her. We’ve taken her to our local vet and we gave her the medicine they prescribed but it didn’t help. What should I do? Also for context, she has another illness that means that when she is anxious, she gets a runny nose and watery eyes? Which is why her nose is runny in the photo. The local vet also told us that this illness could not be fixed. Any advice would be extremely helpful 🙏

Hello!  It sounds as though the correct thing to do is to revisit your vet.  Vets dont usually give out a treatment and expect never to hear from you again;  usually they will ask for a revisit to follow up after treatment, perhaps with a view to continue the treatment if things are improving or to change their approach if not.  If a revisit wasn't advised in this case, then we would recommend taking the initiative yourself.  If your vet doesnt know that treatment hasn't worked, they will not be able to discusz a next step.   Was the antibiotic very recent? - because the nose is still very pus-filled as well.  I wonder whether your vet will want to take samples.  Either way, perhaps a review is the next step.

It sounds as though your vet may have a working diagnosis already, in which case samples may not be so helpful.  I am wondering whether cat flu, or even a cancer, could be present - but I am seeing this picture completely out of context, where as your vet will know the big picture.  Please do let us know what conclusion is reached in the end.

Ok I'll definitely make sure to take her back to the vet. And like you said they did say that she probably had the 'cat flu' and that was causing her sniffles. The symptoms  come and go pretty periodically and are worse whenever she's stressed. I'm not sure what I should do to help with that, I got the impression that there wasn't much I could do? Also the antibiotics finished about a month ago, and I did actually notice a slight improvement to her lips. I thought that maybe because I had used them all that would be enough to cure the swelling, but I suppose I need to keep her on them for longer for it to completely go away? Thank you very much btw