Cat lives inside, but recently had a friend stay over. She gave him fleas. Now he’s sharing the fleas with me.
I’d like to avoid using poisons if at all possible. I figured I could just shave him and wash him a couple of times til he’s flea free. However, I’ve not shaved a cat before, and just wanted to check there’s nothing wrong with my plan.
Is shaving a cat a bad idea? I plan to use electric clippers, not an actual razor, by the way.
Has anyone here shaved a cat? Are there any issues I should know about?
My mom says it would be cruel. I don’t get this. I’ve had a buzzcut before and it didn’t bother me. But I’m not a cat. Would it really be cruel for a cat?
Additional info - cat lives mostly indoors, and only goes out with supervision. There are high fences, so he can’t escape the yard. And we live in the tropics, so he won’t be experiencing temperatures below 28 degrees centigrade.
That’s a bit extreme, and it probably won’t solve the problem. The fleas are not just on the cat, they’re everywhere the cat’s gone, and they don’t care if there’s fur on him or not.
Just use the drops. Clean your house thoroughly, paying particular attention to places where your cat likes to hang out the most, and liberally spread around some diatomaceous earth (“DE”; get “food grade,” and not the stuff they sell for swimming pools). It may take a couple of rounds of DE (spread it around, wait a few hours or a whole day, then vacuum it up), but it will eventually take care of the little bastards.
If your cat is anything like my cats, he or she will become a flying ball of teeth and claws the moment you turn on the clippers.
And even if you were able to successfully do the operation, it won’t do a damn thing about the fleas because they’ll still be in the carpet and furniture.
Shaving won’t help, unless you also plan on bathing him regularly. Get the prescription flea drops from a vet, post-haste. The longer you wait, the more time the fleas have to take hold in your house.
If you shave the cat, please videotape it and post in on YouTube so we can watch hilarity ensue. Oh, and you’d better buy stock in band-aids and triple antibiotic ointment first. Not for the cat, for you.
Seriously - won’t work. Flea eggs are super teeny tiny small and you can’t shave close enough and thoroughly enough to get them all. You may possibly get all the adult fleas (who will promptly jump off the pile of fur on the floor and back onto the cat, or onto your ankles, on into your furniture and bide their time) but you won’t get all the eggs.
I just talked about this with my vet, and he said that after you’ve treated the house and the animal, make sure you flea-bomb the crawl space under your house, if you have one. The fleas will just go hang out in there until it’s safe to get back in the house, if you don’t.
I was surprised to learn it, but shaving a cat can often be very traumatic for the cat, even if done under sedation. I learned this when our gray longhair disappeared for two months. When we got him back, his fur was so terribly matted that the vet recommended shaving him from below the shoulders down. That was 8 years ago and he still doesn’t like being touched anyplace where he got shaved, a big change from before. I wouldn’t put much stock in one data point, but that’s when I was told that this is common. I think I’d still have gone for the shaving, though, had I known. But I wouldn’t for fleas.
Cats have the skin of a pudding. It’s not nice and tight and firm like human hide which shaves so nicely yet still gets plenty of nicks.
It takes a good deal of skill and should only be done by someone who knows their cat skin, and even then should only be done for real problems like bad matting or veterinary procedures.
The results probably wouldn’t be anything to bother a flea but would be hell for you and the cat.
I share your concern for giving a pet weird medicines and using insecticides anywhere near them, but that’s what works in the end. It doesn’t pay to hesitate. It will only result in more flea bites.
You can try home remedies like putting burning candles in the middle of plates of soapy water. Flea is supposed to jump to the warmth of the flame, lands in the soap water and drowns because the soap weakens the water surface, turning it into a sort of quicksand.
If you comb your cat every week, you know the problem is solved when you no longer comb out little black crumbs from her fur that turn red in the water. The black crumbs are flea poop and consist mostly of the cat blood the fleas have sucked up.
So, when you don’t catch any more fleas, keep combing untill you don’t find flea poop any more, too.
Supervised candles, of course. But yeah, more a good idea in theory then practical.
Don’t mess with the over the counter stuff. Go to your vet and get a tube or two of Advantage. That’s enough for two months. That should do the trick. Unless her unclean friend comes back.
Shaving would be a waste of time and without other measures, the diatomaceous earth won’t work unless you fill your house to the depth of eight feet. The fleas aren’t just on the cat. They’re on you and the carpet, the curtains, the furniture, you name it. You need to be get nasty with them or they’ll never go away.
That’s over-the-counter where I live ( as is Frontline ). Well, locked in a cabinet due to price, but still available at better Pet Stores. Just don’t waste time with the cheaper Hartz et al. - you want the stuff locked in the cabinet.
The primary thing wrong with your plan is that it’s going to be completely ineffectual. Fleas don’t care about hair, so shaving the cat is totally pointless. And if you’re actively seeing fleas, and especially if the fleas are biting you (which is what I assume you mean when you say the cat is sharing his fleas with you), you aren’t even in the same continent with the point at which a few baths will take care of the problem.
Fleas are attracted to heat, so they preferentially go to the warmest host they can find. Dogs and cats run a few degrees hotter than we do, so fleas greatly prefer to feed on them rather than us. If fleas are reduced to feeding on humans, that means there’s a LOT of them. They’re in your mattress and other soft furnishings, they’re all along your baseboards, they’re everywhere. You’re going to have to treat the house, as well as the cat.
If you want to try the DE and bath route, I’d strongly advise you to talk to your vet about bathing frequency and what shampoo to use. Cats aren’t at all set up to have the oil stripped out of their skin and hair on any kind of ongoing basis, and regular bathing can cause them some serious skin issues. And for the love of Og, don’t use people shampoo, dish detergent, or over the counter animal shampoo marked as “Flea shampoo.” You can fuck your cat up really badly doing that.
I tried everything - Advantage, all the expensive stuff, cheap stuff, etc. The only thing that worked was Revolution. I got it from a place in AU - Petshed, maybe…was much cheaper that way, and I have some left for when the hot weather comes back around.
Yes, it’s poison, but you use very little and it’s been tested in labs for side effects. It’s good stuff and I wouldn’t use anything else.
