One thing that causes excess tearing is hair in their eyes. How do I know this? Well, when I got my first show persian, I was told to and shown how to trim the eyes thanks to Lynda Knight Peace. For show cats this is done to "open" the eyes - so no fur covers their eyes.
So, I went home and practiced on a couple of rescues. What I noticed is that the cats with trimmed eyes had less tearing in many cases.
In Wendy's case, it made a huge difference. If you look at the before photo you can see the eye lashes are long (over 1/4 inch) and over her eye.
So, after cleaning her eyes, I take my handy curved scissors and carefully trim the hair, starting from the outside working in. After much practice, I can get it evenly cut at about 1/32 of an inch. But if it's a bit longer, it still will help. You must hold their head steady and do the trimming carefully - you don't want to cut the eyelid or poke the eye.
But you can see in the comparison photo how open the right eye is compared to the left.
And in the top view, you can see how short the hair is. Ideally on a show cat, I would then come back with thinning shears or a grooming stone and carefully blend the cut area into the head hair.
The result is Wendy keeps her eyes open more, there's less tearing, and I got to practice!
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