how am i supposed to get rid of these fleas?!?

Question

i have two cats which we try to keep indoors. one of them sneaks out occasionally, and so both of them recently ended up getting fleas.

we took the cats to the vet, treated them with advantage, and bathed them in dawn. we also got a spray from the vet to spray all over the house to kill any fleas, larvae, or eggs that may have gotten in the carpet or furniture.

this was two weeks ago and we are still finding fleas on the cats and larvae where the cats lay. granted, it has gotten better but how are we supposed to rid of them completely??

i dont' know if i mentioned this, but we sprayed the house three times and vaccuumed EVERYWHERE!

Answer 1

My Blog Entry for September 20, 2007 could be useful as your deflea program:

What to do for Itchy and Scratchy !

My very long and thorough blurb about fleas. This can work for both cats and dogs.

PART ONE - Treat your pets:
Advantage and Frontline spot treatments both work well, but each works only on a certain type of flea. All the other flea collars out there are useless or dangerous. Call your vet to find out which of these two works best in your area.

You need to bathe your pet first. Shampoo her (him) with Dawn dishwashing liquid and leave the soapy lather on for 5-7 minutes. Be careful not to get any of it in your pets' eyes. Rinse them thoroughly. Only when they are completely dry can you apply the drops. Never use flea sprays or powders or any other insecticidal products on your animals.

Even after you have treated your home (PART TWO below), you'll have to comb your pets out every day with a flea comb (these are cheap), as new fleas will continue to hatch out for a month from your carpet. Your set-up will be: the flea comb, a zip lock baggie, a lint roller. As you comb out each dog or cat, stick the hair, dirt and fleas to sheets of the lint roller. When you catch a flea, quickly behead him with the flea comb, so he cannot wiggle free. Dispose of the lint sheets in the ziplock bag, and to be safe put it into a second ziplock baggie. Go on to the next animal. You'll know it when your pets are becoming cleaner. At the worst phase you'll need to do this every day or twice a day for each pet. After the fleas are gone, you should still groom your pet on a regular basis, so take out that flea comb twice a month and see if fleas are returning.

PART TWO - Treat your home: Do not call a pest control service. They put down some dangerous chemicals, and spray some, mostly without any consideration for the safety of you and your pets (birds are especially vulnerable to all kinds of chemicals). You do not want any chemical residue left in your home, do you?
Go to Home Depot, Lowes or your neighborhood hardware store and get "foggers" or "fog bombs" of the strongest type you can. (This absolutely needs to be done by a responsible adult who can read English the instructions well). You're going to have to fog your home at least twice. But one fogger for each 1000 square feet of your home - for each session. So if you have 3000 square feet, buy 6 foggers. Be prepared to evacuate all animals and people from the house for the duration of the fogger plus 2 hours. Prepare carefully, according to instructions (cover food prep areas, put food away, turn off electricity and pilot lights, etc.) Everyone and al animals (including fish) must leave. Then set up your foggers and set them off according to a plan, which will leave the door you exit from last. When the time is up, you'll need to come back in the house to open all the windows, and put on the fan, to let the air out of the house. Ventillate for 1-2 hours this way. Don't let anyone in before this has finished. Fog again in 2 weeks. (You are lucky if you can do this during the summer months!)



PART THREE - more house preparation: If you have a fair amount of carpet, this is not going to be enough to get rid of your fleas if they have started to occupy your home. All carpet must be washed thoroughly and vacuumed. If you have orientals, send them out for cleaning. (Don't forget the cat tree and doggie beds!)

This is the worst part: Even after the carpets have been washed thoroughly and professionally, fleas may still hatch out. You'll need to vacuum the entire carpeted area of the house every day. Each day, immediately after the vacuuming is finished - remove your vacuum bag, seal it in double layer of plastic ziplock bags, and put in a new bag.

If you can buy (either on the Internet or at your vet) some spray Frontline or Advantage, put a tiny bit on a sponge and lightly rub it into some problem carpet areas. Also, you can treat a room that is isolated with carpet, by rubbing a mixture of table salt and Borax (1:1) into it, waiting 7-10 days, then vacuuming it up thoroughly.

I'm sorry to tell you all this, but you'll probably have excellent controll of all fleas within a month. You're going to think "My life is fleas!" But, this will pass and your pets will be flea-free and healthy.

PART FOUR - avoiding reinfestation: Make sure your animals get their treatment every month. We use Frontline and it is very expensive, but if we had 5 cats or dogs I would definitely use the spray which can be ordered over the Internet (one squirt to the back of the neck skin) to save money. Comb them at least once a week after the fleas have passed, and keep a close eye on the situation. For long haired cats and dogs, you can get them trimmed to a shorted more maneagable hair length while you are going through this.

Answer 2

It's not larvae you're seeing where the cats lay, it's flea dirts (poos). The larvae, pupae and eggs of fleas are microscopic, you can't see them.

OK, a couple of important points: if you didn't wait 48 hours after applying the Advantage before you bathed in Dawn, you will have washed the Advantage off. If you bathed before applying the Advantage, it won't work. If you got the Advantage all on the fur of the animal instead of the skin, it won't work. Don't bath cats for fleas, it doesn't help, it just makes proper treatment more difficult.

I suggest you apply Advantage regularly (i.e monthly) to the skin of all your cats. Don't bath them.

As for the house spray - if it was from a vets it should be decent. However, 2 sprays at least 2 WEEKS APART is usually the way to go - even sprays that are supposed to kill eggs don't always, or they don't get them all - you need to wait a couple of weeks between sprayings for the eggs to hatch before you have another go. It helps to turn up your heating in the interim, this encourages eggs to hatch.

Chalice

Answer 3

Well approximately seventy five% of fleas are residing within the atmosphere (condominium, sofa, carpet, garments). So what you spot at the animals is solely the end of the iceberg. So the recognition will have to cross to the furnishings and carpet then the puppy. You can take a look at cleansing it or fumigating the condominium, however we had the equal main issue however we moved (no longer considering the fact that of the fleas) and we bought often new furnishings and they're close to all long gone. We have a puppy, a kitten and a bunny and so they all had fleas but if we moved they close to all disappeared. So if its rather dangerous new furnishings probably a choice. And for the animals, the vet had given us a remedy for the kitten the helped with fleas and heartworms. Even regardless that we would not have fleas anymore we nonetheless positioned it on her each and every three months simply to support hinder it.

Answer 4

Well one thing to do with the pets' bed area is to heat up some water and place it in a old soda or water bottle that is covered in 2 sided tape, then place it in the pet bed for a 10-15 mins. The hot water attracts the fleas and they stick to the tape. Do once a day to make sure you get the adult fleas.

When it comes to the rest of the house, we had to do ours 4 times before we got them all. Get a time activated spray, ours kills eggs and larva up to 6months. The main thing is doing it over and over again is your best option. Its a lot of work but it's worth it.

The next more expensive thing would be to hire an exterminator to do your house and yard.

Answer 5

Even tho you treated the cats, try just using a flea comb a couple of times a day and bath them in flea soap.

Answer 6

Everything that can be washed in really hot water, do so. Retreat the cats with another similar product to the Advantage. A very safe way to treat carpeting is with borax.

Answer 7

salt the carpets and leave on for two or three days. this wont hurt the cats. meanwhile with the kitties, put revolution on thier shoulder blade, about 10 bucks a tube each, do not bathe them. it kills the fleas, earmites and certains worms, for a month. the salt will make the fleas bloodthisty, cause they suck the salt, but they dehydrate fast, or bite the kitty with the revolution and is killed really fast. twelve hours after i put revolution on a kitten that was ate up with fleas, her little blanket was covered in dead and dying fleas. ppl like to dump thier critters on my corner..........