Actually I want to know how to keep fleas off the kitties of out of the house. I don’t know. It is starting again and I want to come down hard on the flea population. I want them to shudder at the whisper of my name. I want the fleas to warn their childer to behave or that I wil get them.
Problem is that my apt is semi below ground. So my the bottom of my front windows is right at ground level. This, I think provides the fleas with an excellent entry point.
Can I plant something there that will ward off fleas? Do marigolds work on fleas? I always heard that they repel incects.
Now on the cats I have been using some of the flea drops. However their effectiveness seems to diminsh over time. Right now the fleas would just jump off the cat and live on me for a few days and then go back to living on the cat.
I find myself in the same situation – about a month ago, we brought an adorable Siamese kitten into our household, rescued from the wild. He brought fleas with him - and we have 2 other cats. So far, we have attempted the following:
bath with flea shampoo (cats + bath = mayhem)
drops on back of neck (from grocery store)
combing, dropping fleas into alcohol
I’m praying to the Cat Gods that we’re flea-free, we haven’t seen one in a couple of days (crossing fingers). If all else fails, the vet is the place to go!
Zodiac Fleatrol spray is the best thing I have ever seen to kill fleas. You can watch them die, it’s wonderful (I hate fleas). I once found a kitten on the highway, sprayed him with this stuff, and counted the fleas as the died and fell off. I got up to 100 before I got tired of counting.
I am so happy to see this thread. I’m currently living in flea hell. I spray with Frontline every damn day, sleep on a bed sprinkled with Eucyliptus leaves and still wake up almost eaten alive every morning. I’ve never heard of flea traps either, I’m going to Petco tommorow to look.
Get thee to Google™. I’ve been buying flour moth traps and other kitty treatment stuff online for ages. The last site which I visited mentioned flea traps.
They show up on eBay frequently and there are probably other outlets, too. And there are other glue boards available than the ones they supply. I use some manufactured by a company called “Catchmaster” in Brooklyn.
A flea bath will kill all the fleas that are on the cat at the time of the bath, but will not stop them from jumping on again as soon as the cat is back home. Before the current modern age of flea control products that was the best that could be done, but now science has brought us wonderful products that should wipe out your flea problem.
Please note, however, that the products you buy in the grocery store are NOT the same as you can get at your veterinarian’s office. A brief interjection before continuing:
There are several products sold by veterinarians that are made by the major drug companies that will virtually 100% keep all the fleas off your kittens. One is Advantage, made by Bayer. Bayer has now come out with Advantix, which is the Advantage with additions that also kill ticks and repel mosquitoes. A second product is Frontline, made by Merial. A third is Revolution, made by Pfizer. Revolution has been approved as a prescription drug, which means a veterinarian must prescribe it (it kills ticks, heartworms, ear mites, hookworms and roundworms in addition to fleas). Advantage (or Advantix) and Frontline are not classified as drugs, which means that legally they don’t have to be sold by a veterinarian, but Bayer and Merial refuse to sell them through any retail outlet besides Veterinarians. That is why your grocery stores do not carry them.
The stuff they do sell in grocery stores is simply inferior. If you want a brief explanation as to what the difference is:
If your cat (or dog) has a severe flea infestation and you want to kill the fleas IMMEDIATELY (you don’t want to wait several hours for the Advantage or Frontline to spread over their body) there is a pill called Capstar. No liquid to apply to the back of the neck, just a little pill and the fleas start dying and dropping off almost immediately. The drawback with Capstar is that the pill only works for one day.
Another flea product is called Program. Program does not kill any fleas at all, but it renders all the fleas on your pet sterile, so they cannot give birth to more fleas. It too comes in a pill, so there is no liquid to apply, and for cats there is an injectable version that lasts for six months. If your cat is any indoor only cat, Program should do just fine. If any occaisional flea gets on your cat, no big deal. Since they cannot create 40 - 50 flea eggs a day as normal fleas can, the problem never gets even noticable, and the original flea dies soon enough on its own.
If you want any additional information about any of these products, there are links to all of them on the Flea Control Center page linked above.
Blonde, please, please, please, PLEASE tell me you didn’t put that Hartz Biospot shit on your kitty. Please. And if you did it once, don’t ever do it again.
It’s just concentrated flea spray, you know. I don’t know if it’s a quality control thing or what, but that stuff is really horrible about overdosing animals with pyrethrins. Especially cats and even more especially kittens. Pyrethrin exposure can cause all sorts of neurological damage (some of it permanent) and death, and it’s a horrible, nasty way to die.
Please, for the love of your pets (and the mental health of your vet techs) don’t use this garbage. Not only is it dangerous, it’s not very effective, and it washes right off, so you’re just throwing your money down a rathole.
Personally and professionally, I reccommend Frontline Plus. It kills all the fleas on your pet within 24 hours, and it gets the eggs and larva too, to prevent further infestations. It seems fairly pricey, at $10 or more a dose, but for indoor cats a dose lasts 3 months or so, usually. Three to five bucks a month seems like a decent price to be flea-free and saved the hassle of doing baths and stuff.
I’d also go with Frontline as being the most effective treatment for cats.
However, Zebra, you may also need to nuke your house as fleas (and their larvae) can live in carpets and furnishings for months (in a dormant state). We use Flea Bombs (see below for eg), which are aerosols that you set off in an enclosed room, leave it for two hours or so, then ventilate. Using these around the house every 6 months or so seems to stop the problem.
I am especially diligent about this as one of ours is allergic to flea bites - as am I!
Zebra, get a flea treatment that you can apply onto the scruff of their necks…something like Frontline or Advantage. They can last for several months, and there are also flea and tick treatments that last 6 or 12 months. I always buy it in the larger dosage pack because it’s cheaper…that way it only costs me around $17 to treat 5 cats. Also, get several cans of those flea bombs and set them off when you (and your kitties) are out of the house for a couple of hours.
I am not sure if anyone had posted this yet, but I always put a flea collar in my Vacuum cleaner bag. This helps effectlively kill the egg sacs I suck up. We haven’t had a flea problem in years I attribute it to A) out cats like bathes B) the flea collar in the vacuum bag!
The ONLY way we got rid of fleas is to treat the kitties and BOMB the house. You will keep getting them until all the fleas in your home are killed. It really works. As far as them coming in through the window, maybe you could tape flea collars along the edges of the window?
We only get the fleas in the summer. So they are starting to appear. It’s odd because I live in NYC and with steam heat my apt is a balmy 85 degrees throughout the winter.
I’ve used the Frontline and the Advantage/Avantix stuff but last summer the fleas seemed to care less and less about it. Plus it leaves the cats fur looking strange down their backs. Kind of greasy and sticking up, and of course style is very important to my kitties.
I’ve never bombed the place because, it is an apartment so if the fleas die in my place but thrive in another apt they’ll come back, and my cats are indoor only and the logistics of evacuating the cats for the bombing are a bit daunting.
So I’ll start up the war again only this time it’s personal.
Are you just putting the Frontline on the fur, or are you getting it all the way down onto the skin? If it’s being applied properly, there should only be an oily spot for a day or two, and it should take care of the fleas.
Even if fleas are in other apartments, your cats will be their preferential hosts, so once you clean out your place, any new migrants should bite your cats and die. You may get the occasional bite, but it shouldn’t be a real issue.
You can also try sprinkling sevin dust around every few days. Heck, if you don’t want to use Frontline, sprinkle it on your cats. It’s safe for vertebrates, and I’ve never seen a reaction to it. (It gets ticks, too, but that’s probably not such an issue in the middle of the city.) You can get it pretty cheap in the garden section of most stores, and it works pretty fast. You have to reapply it once a week or so, though.
I meant to mention it last night, but then I read Blonde’s post and totally forgot. Sorry. I get even more worked up about those flea drops they sell in the grocery than I do about those shitty parvo vaccines they sell at the farm store and in catalogs.
With four pets living in Florida (It’s never not flea season), I’ve waged some war on the little buggers myself. I’ll pause while you picture me as Wile E. Coyote, with my ACME rockets and such…
Step one: Get fleas off cats. Spray with a flea spray, give 'em a bath, comb out the fleas. Drown any live ones. I understand that pennyroyal (an herb) can be crushed into fine powder and rubbed into fur for effective flea control. I am not so sure about the safety of cats licking it off, so do more research before you try that. I’ve also seen people rub Seven dust into their pets fur. Also – even though the package says it’s safe – doesn’t sound safe to me.
Step two: Get the fleas out of your fabrics. You can try a bug bomb. You have to vacate, with the pets, for a day or so. I think that’s only feasible if you’re moving. You can spray every single inch of carpet – the Zodiac flea stuff has worked well for me. Anything you can toss into the washer, such as bedding (yours and the cats’) should be washed in HOT water. I’ve also used borax, sprinkled liberally throughout the carpet and rubbed in (by walking around). Do not vacuum it backup! Just get a box of borax, sprinkle it all over and leave it to be walked in to the carpet. Fleas eat it and die a painful death. (This is great for preventative flea control.)
Step three: Get your kitty on Advantage. You do have to use it about every 3-4 weeks. But it does work.
Well, I figured that the grocery store drops weren’t going to be as effective as medicine prescribed by a vet, but I had no idea they were harmful! That’s just horrid, why is on the market if it’s unsafe??
I think (hope) we’re flea-free, but if we see any more we’ll have to march all 3 of our cats to the vet. The flea comb/alcohol thing is really tedius, by the way.
