Eye has discharge

My cats eye has had a constant discharge for a few days and I have been cleaning it with a home made, cat safe saline solution made with 1 cup of water and 1/4 TSP of sea salt mixed together at room temperature. He squints his eye a bit and after I clean it its nice and open but looks pretty red. An ideas what would cause this????

Take it to the vet. Eye problems can get very bad very quickly, and you could end up with a blind cat. Make sure they stain the eye to look for abrasions or ulcers before they give you any eye medication. There are meds out there that if they are put into an eye with an injury, it can make it worse, not better.

Eye discharge can be caused by anything from illness like a cold, an injury, or even a tumor.

Where did you get the cat? Two of ours have what the vet calls the "farm cat virus". They typically get it as kittens and for some reason it never goes away, although it does get better with age. Our eldest cat is 7 and has had 2 episodes in which I had to take him in and get medicated eye drops because it turned into an eye infection. Our other kitty (his half sister) is 5 and she's never had it bad enough to need meds. The virus can't be treated with medication unless it turns into an eye infection. For some reason there's nothing you can do about it. Can he still open his eye and use it fine? When I have to take in my oldest cat his eye gets really red, then puffs up and swells shut. The younger cat just has the eye discharge and she's finally getting to the point that her eye is normal majority of the time.

Do you have pictures?

You can kind of see Luna's eye issue, it's a clear discharge and she squints her eye a lot. She didn't stop doing that till she was 4
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t...a/Luna/014.jpg

Enzy still squints his eye that gives him issues from time to time, I don't have any pictures saved of when his eye was bad enough to go to the vet. I took them in several times to different vets and they all said the same thing. We do give some of the farm cats penicillin shots when they get really bad, but it never cures it, just keeps them alive when they get a really bad infection.
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t...a/Enzo/058.jpg