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Hello forum.
I've recently moved in with an elderly relative whose cat clearly has fleas. They don't seem to bother her but they certainly do me!
To paint the scene if you walk barefoot between two rooms, you'll arrive with a couple of fleas on your feet. Sitting up in bed you'll be picking them off any exposed skin every couple of minutes. Last week I laid solid wooden floors in the kitchen and bathroom and you can see them skating about on it after they've dropped off your trouser legs.
It's a real nightmare.
The cat seems relatively flea free really. I've given her two baths in as many weeks (sounded like the exorcist), and washed out probably 30 in total, and when inspecting her daily there's never any obvious ones on her. Though I do hear her scratching a fair bit (bell on collar).
I've treated her with the usual flea drop treatments over the past few months when visiting but I think the eggs are in the carpets etc and it's just a perpetual cycle of fleas. It's only since moving in that I've come to learn how many there are!
I bought her a new flea collar today btw.
Aaaaaaaanyway, is there a long term solution to this problem as it's not a healthy situation for anyone.
Please help!
Cheers
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Couple more fleacollars. One for each ankle?
You need to make sure the cat is properly treated and then fumegate the house with spray vets sell best one. It will kill the eggs. Spray in the corners and ynder everything.
The eggs & larvae will be dropped onto the carpet and any furniture where the cat goes. I think that the larvae eat detritus, but check. Vaccuum everything at least every 3 days, for a couple of weeks. And spray, one room at a time.
Treat the cat properly and bomb the house with sprays.
Best spray I've found is called Indorex, direct from the vets. All advice above is good, make sure you vacuum EVERYWHERE! (including beds and under furniture - more thorough = fewer fleas)
As well as treating the cats as you are, try Indorex Flea Spray by Virbac.
Certainly worked for us when the Borders picked up some undesirable hangers-on and the usual on-dog stuff wasn't working.
This is a really good spray. Do pet and human bedding and furniture.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Virbac-02-4162-Indorex-Flea-Spray/dp/B00GKHI2PW
Beaten to it by fadda 🙂
I found Indorex was cheapest buying it on-line.
Great minds....
Do they still sell the flea bombs that clear entire rooms?
We had a similar problem when we rented a flat where the previous tenant had multiple dogs. Although the flat was empty for 3 months before we moved in the critters just waited in their little eggs. Once they woke up my legs looked like I had the plague!
The problem wasn't touched by the sprays from the shops, or hoovering till Henry gave up and died. In the end a pest control company came in and gas bombed the whole place, twice. We had to move out for 24 hours but they never returned.
Good luck.
Evening. From memory we liberally put salt down everywhere, left it then vacuumed up. I think we found the tip(s) on eHow. The bed was the worse place (our dog used to sleep on it).
We've got Acclaim here but Indorex rings a bell too
Potassium Permanganate and Formaldehyde mix together with breathing apparatus and leave the house for 24 hours everything within it will be dead. You never know your luck the cat maybe in there as well 🙂
Note "may" take some airing out before you go back in I'd give it a week or 2 😀
Or Indorex
Yes I remember buying big cheap discount bags of the stuff. Leave it a day or two. Bingo.
You can get flea bomb things, set them off and they fumigate the place, book Mog in a cattery and set one off before work.
Indorex is great. Cheapest we found was here:
Tried the flea bomb twice and still had them, tried the indorex as recommended by our vet, sprayed everything everywhere and all gone. Also got Advantage flea treatment for the cat, better than anything else we tried, also recommended by our vet. 2 sizes for different size cats:
and
Don't forget to do your old relative as well else it'll be futile! 😉
+1 for Indorex and advantage!!
Bombs don't work, so save your cash. Get the cat treated with frontline (collars are a waste of money). Get a proper product from the vet. Flea eggs are basically everywhere under carpet, cracks, on plants and clothing. Wash carpet and clothing at a high temp ( if already sprayed carpet don't wash).
Nicotine patches in draws and cupboards will remove fleas.
Soaking nicotine patches in hot water than using it on the carpet kills everything so keep cat out for a week.
Bombs don't work, so save your cash. Get the cat treated with frontline
This.
Trust me, I've been through every treatment on the market. Frontline the cats, everything else drops into place; a Frontlined cat will wipe out the problem over time. Nothing else works.
I know of a couple of guys who may be able to help.
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Frontline is losing its effectiveness I think. We have had success with Advocate from the vets. Expensive but worth it.
Vacuum a lot. Wash dog bedding and yours mats alot. Do the treatment on the cat monthly and it will act as a magnet for the remaining fleas and kill them.
I think bombs are largely useless. Spray around the edges of rooms seemed effective.
In some places fleas have become resistant to frontline. Your local vet will be able to recommend the most effective treatment, we use stronghold on our cats which works a treat.
Bombs and hoovers etc are fine but unless you get the cat properly sorted the problem will return. Also the moggy will attract fleas which will hop onboard and then get poisoned by the frontline / stronghold etc.
Then you can stop scratching.
Thanks so much folks.
Does the cat go out partying and return re-infested?
Suppose it's worth mentioning she's a house cat. Hasn't been outside in years.
Spray as advised above. Go to local vet for advice. The eggs can lay dormant for a considerable time hence moving into previously empty house and you get bitten. The eggs are activated by being disturbed and if there is no animal around they go for the humans. I found all this out after a visit to the Royal Veterinary College at Potters Bar with our lab who is allergic to flea bites. Cue lots of immediate itching.
The vacuum is your friend here. We had a spray that stopped any eggs from maturing into mature fleas. It worked really well. Its not for pet application, just bedding and skirting boards etc. It will allow you to get control again.
Get some Indorex as above, check it on any delicate fabrics, cover any fish tanks then spray everywhere. Get some effective flea treatment eg Advocate, Broadline etc. for the cat.
Crank the heating up, encourage the cat to roam the whole area and vacuum daily for a week (spray inside the vacuum cleaner too!)
You want to kill the adult fleas quickly and encourage all the eggs to hatch out quickly so that you can kill them too.
If it is a big issue I will often add in Program which essentially is birth control for fleas, prevents eggs from hatching and can be really effective in house cats. It is an injection which last for 6 months.
Hang on,
If the flat is full of fleas, and the cat hasn't been outside in years, where did the fleas come from?
Google diatomaceous earth and fleas, it will kill the fleas larvae and eggs.
Don't forget to shave the cat
(spray inside the vacuum cleaner too!)
This too, very important as hoovering doesn't kill them. It just moves them and they can get back out again!
You had better jump to it if you don't want to have to flea the house.
Sounds like the OP needs to get a professional pest controller in from what you has been said about the extent and severity of the infestation. Flea collars, aerosol sprays and fogging bombs will only help with early stage infestations. If you get a pro in they will be able to treat all of the affected areas with a residual insecticide (one that keeps killing fleas for at least a couple of weeks). It sounds like the fleas have been able to become well established and you need a long lasting treatment to break the life cycle.
In some places fleas have become resistant to frontline.
The active ingredient in Frontline has started to lose favour in the pest control world against fleas and the concentration levels in over the counter stuff is also very low.
My advice is ring around until you find a local pest controller who is willing to carry out a surface spray treatment backed up with a fogging (or better still a ULV) treatment. I've found that use of an aggressive residual insecticide concentrate backed up with a fogging machine being used in all of the affected rooms usually sorts out the problem with one treatment. It may not work out to be cheap but you could be flea free in a couple of days. I use this approach and very very rarely get call backs. Any treatment you have carried out will need to be for the whole house.
I had a similar problem in a rented flat, previous tenants had a couple of dogs in there on the sly. About a month after i moved in the fleas started to hatch, and feed. I looked like a plague victim from the knees down.
So i sprayed the whole place, top to bottom, went out on the piss, stopped at a mates over night, then got home at lunchtime and spent an hour vacuuming the place, washing the bedding and so on.
Did the same a fortnight later.
No more fleas.
Don't do what a mate of a mate did and spray the flea stuff into the vacuum while it's running.
Fire brigade were very amused. Or not.
Sudocrem the cat and the fleas will stick to it, just pick them off later.
Don't do what a mate of a mate did and spray the flea stuff into the vacuum while it's running.
I did this with air freshener to make it smell nice, it actually blew the thing apart! Mrs spursn17 wasn't happy.
If you want a smelly hoover, suck up them scented petals/seeds/odd planty bits that appear by magic in dishes on window cills. The smell gets blasted throughout the house.
Then you look for the instructions that came with the hoover, to find out how to empty the damn thing.
The only thing we fond to work for the house was from the vets. It's called Vibrac. Superb
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And for the animal itself, the best we've found is Stronghold, again this has to be gotten from the vets.
IME frontline doesn't work, Advantage does. I am guessing, fleas are building up resistance to the former and in time will to the later, but haven't yet.
Vacuum and treat the cat, the problem will go away.
[i]suck up them scented petals/seeds/odd planty bits that appear by magic in dishes on window cills[/i]
[ian paisley voice]
This is a good protestant household - no potpourri here!
[/ian paisley voice]
Another vote here for Indorex or Acclaim sprays, both work very well from experience.
As its not been mentioned you can buy a short acting treatment called capstar, its amazing stuff, and what kennels often give animals that come in with fleas. It kills every flea on the animal over a short period, but sadly doesnt last longer than 24 hours. The mass flea genocide debris it generated from one cat was unbelieveable, considering we had been using spot treatments/collars/combing and were only seeing the odd few when we did.
We did the following to eliminate an infestation we couldnt get rid of previously: Spray a small area of the house to kill any live fleas or eggs, youll want to confine the mog to this area next (we used the en-suite).
Give the capstar and lock the cat in the sprayed area for a good few hours.
While the cats locked in the area spray the rest of the house to kill anything thats left. Means all the fleas on it are now dead, and no live fleas are left in the house.
Use a spot on treatment like Advocate as you let the at out of its prison, so any eggs left on the cat cant hatch due to the spray/spot treatment.
Never had a problem since 🙂
Thanks so much for all of the lengthy and well informed posts guys, it's certainly given me plenty of options. Truth be told i'm a little confused by the many and varied products out there...
I've just spoken to the local council who will charge £40 (pensioner rate) to spray the flat, and a local company who will charge £120 to spray but will return if fleas have not died out after 21 and re-treat.
I like the idea of the smoke bomb thing as this is clearly not just a couple of rogue fleas. The cheapest quote for the bomb though has been £190!!
Could the DIY route be as thorough, yet cheaper?
Bombing does not work. Go cheap and end up paying forever.
Fleas also carry disease that are harmful to humans
£40 for the pensioner rate sounds like excellent value so long as you can clear the house for 24hrs or whatever it is - I'd certainly be looking at a professional for an infestation as bad as you're describing.