Bloody BLOODY fleas

[mostdays]

Our cats seem to have brought fleas home. Although saying that, they are properly spot on-ed and I cannot find a flea on either of them, nor have they been doing the scratchy scratchy infested cat flea dance. But there are definitely fleas in the house: DH spotted one in ds2's room and I have a brand new clutch of classic flea bites up my leg. I've just finished hoovering, spraying, re hoovering and laundering everything in sight. The extortionately expensive spray I got at the vet this morning (no wonder it was expensive I suppose, a vet that opens on Sunday deserves to make a decent profit for doing so and making it possible to lay hands on decent flea treatment straight away) is pretty much guaranteed to work... But I'm so cross! I hate fleas.I only use the vet approved spot on and do so on the proper schedule, so it's really annoying that we have them again (last time was about 18 months ago iirc). To add insult to injury apparently I am a gourmet meal to fleas and DH and the dc are utterly abhorrent because I'm the only one with bites and they're all unscathed.

My neighbour has mice and says that's worse but idk, there's something about fleas that makes me feel so grubby :(

What spot on do you use?

Another asking re spot on. Frontline doesn't work anymore in some areas.

However the key is spraying your house. Indorex or such like can be bought without prescription

LEM I asked my vet about that. She says Frontline does work but you also need to treat the house every (I think she said) 6 months.

Frontline has definitely been shown to be far less effective. It is actually supposed to treat the environment by maki g the eggs not hatch however there seems to be resistance developing. This is a regional thing.

I would recommend changing to stronghold or advocate as these are much more effective.

You absolutely have to treat the environment though regardless of what you use and then maintain regular monthly spot on treatment

I've just finished dealing with a flea infestation at my elderly mother's house. Bought Indorex and followed all instructions. Twice. Still the fleas were biting so we called in pest control who came and nuked the house. £100 well spent.
The guy reckoned you would need about 30 cans of off the shelf stuff to clear a full house.
I've had mice and rats in the roof. I think fleas is worse.

I had a horrendous infestation which developed while we were on holiday and the cats were at home being looked after by a cat sitter. I thought it would never go, but a combination of rigorous daily vacuuming, spraying key surfaces with fleakiller, and getting the carpet cleaners in (which needed doing anyway) did see them off in a couple of weeks.

Thanks LEM. We don’t use Frontline. Use Advocate. Indorex is good if you get them in the house.

About this time last year our vets switched from Frontline to Stronghold as the local fleas had gone immune. Not had any trouble since. One of ours is horribly allergic and licks great swathes of fur off when she even smells a flea nearby so we have to keep them all dosed up.

We had to ditch Frontline for Advocate (which is fantastic), as after years of happily using Frontline, it randomly stopped working.

Advocate to treat the cats and Indorex to spray the house (also gets rid of spiders, which is a bonus). This combo has worked for us for years now.

The other thing to consider if you can’t find any sign on the cats themselves is a dead fox somewhere nearby. My parents house was badly infested a couple of years ago and they had no pets at the time. It turned out there was a dead fox in the garden of the property next door and it was literally crawling with them!!

I brought fleas into the house via a bag of donated clothes from a cat heavy house. Cats advocated up. Just me getting bit the only human though. I'm assuming they'll still bite the cat just die afterwards?

Indorex is cheaper from Amazon than a vets. I may just get a dude in though to nuke the house.

No more donated clothes.

My neighbour (well 4 doors up) has just been through this. Their cat treated regularly (I know this because we've taken each others cats to the vet before if one of us was stuck) but they had an outbreak recently. A huge amount of hoovering and "RIP Flea" spray (lol ) seems to have sorted it, but the vet did say that Frontline just doesn't seem to be effective anymore.
My own cat is due in a couple of weeks and the vet is recommending Bravecto. A major plus is that it only needs to be used once every three months as opposed to every month and the vet told my neighbour that if the cat has fleas at the moment, this will kill them off.

It is a nightmare though.

We're using Bravecto as well.

Steam cleaner will help as it will kill fleas, but I have read that you need to do again over a few days as it can make eggs hatch

gamerchick Yes, the dosing makes the cat's blood fatal to the little bastards, but they do need to bite to get it. They will though. They are chewing at your ankles but they can't survive long on human blood so will get back on the cats at any opportunity.

Had a nasty infestation a few weeks ago. Stronghold the pets. Hoover the house like crazy every day. Get a fine tooth flea comb and comb the critters twice a day. Have a cereal bowl with some soapy water next to you, then as soon as you find one, dunk it in the water. Didn't need to resort to the Indorex, but that would have been our next step. Flea combing made 90% of the difference whilst we were waiting for the Stronghold to kick in.

I've met a few pest control people over the years (mice, rats, wasps) and they all seem to be very enthusiastic about their jobs . The guy we had last week was telling war stories about flea infested houses he'd been to. He reckoned fleas can lay dormant for years in an empty house.
I'm thinking we will go to the vet for some different flea stuff as mum has just been using an OTC one.

ChilliJamandAvocado you can comb the cat?? I wouldn't survive.

That's interesting about a Frontline not working as well now - we've been using Broadline (combined flea/worm spot on from vet) and haven't seen any live fleas on his nibs, but I spotted what looked like flea dirt deep in the fur on his neck and DD1 has been bitten. He's due his next dose this week so I'll need to ask the vet what they recommend these days. Is Bravecto a spot on as well or is it an injection? (They offered me some long lasting injection as an alternative to a spot on recently but I stuck with our usual as it had worked until now.)

Sorry, this didn't seem to show up for me as having any replies for ages!

We use advocate spot on. But I've checked both cats again and honestly can see no fleas or flea dirt and they really aren't scratching. Maybe eggs missed ages ago were somehow woken up? Heating going back on possibly? Or we could have had a feline visitor I suppose.

Ugh, I keep imagining new bites every few minutes.

@TheGirlOnTheLanding, Bravecto is a spot on too, not an injection. It's a tube though rather than a plunger, so you might need someone to hold Kitty while you put it on. Back of the neck too.

Thanks @HildaZelda