Our former neighbor mvoed a month ago, and insisted we take her 3 cats for a bit til she found another place for them. One never goes out and its way thin always has been. The other too had had flea baths before she brought them, but got out and now our house has fleas. How to get rid of them, must you bomb the place?
Other neighbors had to bring litter when she didn’t replenish it and she brought a small amoutn fo food, but we want them gone. We are not being paid for this either.
You can go to the vet and get this liquid in a little tube that you put on the cats’ back/neck area. The stuff soaks into the cat and somehow makes the oil secreted by it’s sebaceous glands poisonous to fleas. The fleas have to get on the cat in order to feed (they prefer cats and dogs over humans, according to the vet) and die. Your cats basically become living flea baits! At least this is how my vet explained it to me when my dog got fleas. The little bastards were visible in the carpet but since I have been treating the dog with this stuff, they have gone away. A six-month supply of this stuff was like $100 though, so it will probably be kind of pricey for three cats. It works though, unlike the worthless flea collar we had on him.
Treat the cats with Frontline or a similar product. Then clean everything. Then apply diatomaceous earth to your carpets, upholstered furniture, and around the outside of the house. Then clean everything again.
Sorry, but there’s just no quick-and-easy solution to getting rid of fleas.
The good news is the cats will draw most of the fleas and the Frontline will kill them. The bad news is they are dropping eggs and cocoons everywhere and they can lay dormant for many months, so even once the cats are gone the fleas may return, and you’ll have to do all that cleaning again. You may have to resort to bombing the house, but even that is no guarantee.
I don’t have $100, and am not letting the 2 cats inside anymore.
Can you ask your neighbor to reimburse you for the cost of food, litter, and flea medication? I’d think you’re well within the bounds of human decency to ask, and they should re-pay you.
We thought we had fleas this weekend, and so I did the research. Fortunately, what my wife thought were fleas turned out to be grain weevils, which are still yucky, but at least won’t bite you.
So, here’s what I’ve learned: fleas have a very short life cycle, about 7 days. So, you need to wreck the current generation and the next, but you should be able to get things under control in fairly short order.
The first line of defense against fleas is vacuuming. Vacuum thoroughly every day for a couple of weeks, or if you can’t, vacuum no less than once every three days. Vacuuming destroys eggs and tears fleas apart. If you want to make sure they’re dead, put a flea collar (they’re cheap, pick up several) inside the vacuum bag or canister. Get the baseboards, under beds, under furniture, every nook and cranny. Hell, vacuum the cats themselves if they’ll let ya. And make sure you toss the bag or empty the canister promptly when you’re done, outside.
Next step is washing. Wash anything you can that the fleas have come into contact with, such as pillows or pet bedding or clothes. Wash in hot water, and dry on high heat, to kill any fleas and eggs. Bathe the cats (good luck) with a flea-killing shampoo and Frontline them. When you put the pet beds back out, put flea collars inside them; cut the collars up if you need to.
Finally, poison. Diatomaceous earth or boric acid powder are effective; the former is safe around pets, but the latter you shouldn’t put where a dumb pet would eat it. Use some home-defense-type spray to lay a barrier around your house, and spray your baseboards and affected areas of your carpets with a spray marked for fleas.
And, that’s pretty much it. Flea bombs are hit-and-miss with their effectiveness, so I wouldn’t recommend them; the poison tends to miss areas where fleas are likely to hide, like under beds.
thank you
The diatomaceous earth is a good idea too. In this apartment I used to live in, a neighboring apartment had a bed bug infestation. A few of them apparently made their way into my apartment. I would wake up with a bite nearly every day. Finally I found one of them crawling around under the blankets. I got ahold of the D.E. and made a ring of it around the bed, where the sheets hung down to the floor. I also sprayed the mattresses with water mixed with neem oil, to force them out of the bed. A week or two later, the bites stopped. A month or two later, an exterminator hired by the apartment was checking all the apartments neighboring the infested one. I told them about what I had done, and they searched around and found no signs of bed bugs. That was pretty cool, seeing as how the infested apartment had to be heated up to like 120-130 degrees to kill their bed bugs. That meant they had to move a bunch of stuff out so it wouldn’t be damaged by the heat. I’m glad I avoided that! [/hijack]
The D.E. was kinda tricky to find, I would suggest looking in some smaller, independent, “mom-and-pop” pet stores. That’s where I found it. Apparently the stuff got some bad press because it was used as a de-wormer for puppies and, so the story goes, some puppies were killed as a result. This is what I was told by one of the first pet stores I checked. So it might be tricky to find it. I was told to check out some pool supply stores as well. Also, I guess the stuff is not good to breathe, so when applying it, you might want a dust mask or something because it can make a lot of dust during application. I think it was about $10-15 for a 10 lb. bag.
You can order it online. DO NOT get the stuff they sell for pool filters; it’s treated with chemicals and is carcinogenic. “Food grade” is what you want; it’s perfectly safe to apply around the house, you could even eat it. You do want to use a mask, as it is a very fine white powder, like flour, and can cause respiratory problems if you breathe it.
Holy shit! I’m glad the pool store was sold out then!
You mention cleaning thoroughly, and Max Torque mentions vacuuming. However, an essential part of the cleaning and vacuuming is to use a vacuum that uses bags, not a collection bin. You have to throw away the bags promptly, or else the flea eggs will just incubate in there. Do this at least twice, about 8-10 days apart, and three times is even better, so that you can get the fleas AND their young. Personally, I have always relied on bug bombs, but they are a pain, and expensive to boot.
Yeah, except bed bugs aren’t fleas.
DE is available at any big-box hardware store.
Wow, really? I didn’t know. How perceptive of you.:rolleyes: I shared to help explain how effective the stuff was. If it could take on bedbugs, a notoriously difficult to remove pest, I’m sure it can handle fleas without a problem. Also, notice the [/hijack]. Also, maybe some areas may have the stuff at any old hardware store, but this area did not. I went to multiple hardware stores that did not have the stuff, including some “big-box” hardware stores. The hole in the wall pet store was about the 10th or 11th place I checked before I actually found it.
Also check garden stores for DE.
As for the cats, I’ve had good luck with flea collars on my cat. They aren’t as good as frontline but they do help keep fleas off the cat. Combining that with vacuuming and DE can be both successful and cheap. Always a good combo!
Care to retract that :rolleyes:? purplehorseshoe was responding to the spampost that I deleted, not to you.
Oops! :smack: In that case yes, and the entire post as well. I did not see that. Sorry purplehorseshoe, without the knowledge of this spampost, I thought for sure that was directed at me, since I was the only one who mentioned bedbugs.
Pfft. I wouldn’t have posted in response to the [bed-bug-related spammer] if it had occurred to me that a mod would just remove that post anyway. We cool.
In other news, fleas suck. Good luck, Bertha, and let us know how it’s going!
Went to Home Depot and found a spray, we’ve been using it for 4 days now. They are still there, maybe a bit less. Someone gave us a Raid bomb but am not using it yet as I don’t have a vacuum to use afterwards and cannot afford to wash the clothes afterwards either.
My legs are covered in bites.
Also trying to figure out if we are liable. She visited her former neighbors last week and found out we are not letting the cats back in, they are roaming the street we live on (against the boards rules) but she had said she would take them the 3rd and never showed up. No way will I let cats with fleas back inside.
When my parents had fleas my mom filled a soup plate with water and oil and put a tea light into it, too. In the darkened room the fleas will jump into the light and drown in the water.
It takes a couple of weeks but it’s a non-chemical method.