How the hell do you get rid of fleas?!

[Bananaram]

We catsat a relatives cat for a couple of weeks in the summer hols and now we have bloody fleas! 3 out of 4 of us are being eaten alive 😭

How the hell do I get rid of the little fuckers?! I'm exhausted. I've stripped all the beds, washed all the pillows, duvets, duvet covers, cushion covers in a 60 degree wash, sprayed every room with Indorex, used a treatment on our mattresses, I've been hoovering every damn day and we are STILL getting new bites. My DD has 14 new bites on her back 😰 and my feet are covered!

Do I have to move all the furniture and hoover underneath every day? Our furniture is heavy, I don't have the time or the energy. I can't keep up with all the washing, we don't have a tumble drier to dry stuff so it's been wash in, wash out, stuff on the radiators and me being paranoid that fleas are jumping right onto my freshly washed bedding. We don't have pets of our own so we've never had to deal with this before.

Does anyone know what is the easiest way to get rid of them or am I going to have to keep washing/drying/hoovering for the next month?!

Hoover first, then spray and focus on skirting boards, corners, etc. You need to do it more than once to break the cycle, otherwise there will be eggs left which will hatch. Do it every three days or so for a couple of weeks. You may be spraying a bit too much Indorex though, I found one can plenty for a three-bedroom house.

Put a bowl of water and an electric tea light or similar down overnight. The number of fleas in the water next morning gives you an indication of how bad the infestation is. You should see this reduce to zero.

@username35890 & @Hotandbothered222 how long did you keep hoovering for after you used the spray? I don't want to spend loads of money on spray and then find that a few days later they come back because I wasn't vigilant with the hoovering? I thought we had cracked it the first time round so slacked on the hoovering and then the bites started again so I need to make sure I get the little fuckers for good this time and need to know how long to hoover for!

Bicarbonate of soda over the carpets… leave for 1-2 days then vaccum.

It was a long time ago but I just hoovered once thoroughly.

Thanks @MerelyPlaying we're a medium sized 3 bedroom flat so I'm not sure how many cans I will need, the one can didn't seem to go very far but it's hard to see where I've sprayed it and I didn't want to miss anywhere!

I put a bowl of soapy water in the living room with a tea light in it to see if I could catch any and didn't get anything at all, but I know they have been in our livingroom as I saw one on DDs dinner plate 🤢

I should’ve added, you have my sympathy because it’s horrible and made me feel really dirty, even though my house probably never been hoovered so much!

I've been there, @Bananaram

I was the only person being bitten by them. I was smothered in bites.

I felt like i was losing my marbles, and I'm not exaggerating, either.

Indorex did the trick.

My vet told me to spray with indorex and then vacuum every single day for 2 weeks.

Honestly it's awful, I wake up in the night scratching and can't get back to sleep! I've scratched my leg and hip so much there's big patches of bruising. And wearing shoes when my feet are covered in bites is like torture 😭

I like my home to be clean (not always tidy, but clean!) and I feel so embarrassed. DD6 told her teacher because she is struggling with all the bites and when the teacher mentioned it at parents evening I was mortified 😣 I don't even get the benefit of having a cat (would love one but DH is dead set against it) but we're suffering with the bloody fleas!

We had this had to get professionals in. It did work but was expensive. We have 2 cats they were treated regularly but the over the counter stuff doesn't work fleas are resistant. We now by stuff from the vet 3 monthly that does work!

Indorex has been magic for me. I didn't wash any bedding or spray the bedding. Just sprayed all floor, sofa sides, crevice areas.

Leave the Indorex at least 72 hours before vacuuming where it was sprayed. Needs to do its killing. Vacuuming like crazy before you spray is fine but then empty the v.cleaner.

You're in a flat? I could do a 5 bed house with 2 reception rooms with 2-2.5 cans. I'm super sensitive to bites, btw.

The only way to get rid of them is to get the council pest control in. The man will turn up for about £80 and spray everywhere. You can't hoover for about a week. It's the ONLY thing that's gotten rid of them for me.

I bought a house once with them. Spent a fortune on flea bombs, indorex, collars, killed myself hoovering every day for a month. Had to call pest control in the end. I had no pets in that house either.

My cats now got them once when their flea treatment stopped working. Did the same rigmarole - ended up getting pest control again.

Buy a cat flea collar, cut it up and put it in the hoover bag. It's the only thing they're good for those things.

That sounds horrible, OP!
I don't have any advice, but I hope you will be rid of the fleas soon.

I agree with a previous poster that you should tell the owner of the cat about the fleas, so that they can treat the cat and the humans of that home.

Flea bombs.

Get pest control in. By the time you've spent money in cans of spray you could have paid a professional.

Definitely pest control.

I did experiments and Indorex didn't work on fleas we had this summer.
I kept the cat in the back porch and garden for a month and indorexed every 3 days/vacuumed the house daily. No help whatsoever.

I put 3 fleas under 3 different glasses and sprayed Indorex directly in so that it soaked the paper towels they were sitting on. 3 days later - fleas still alive.

The only thing that worked was giving the cat the prescription only flea tablet, then let the cat roam the house until the fleas have bitten the cat and got poisoned.
If the cat isn't there anymore you might be buggered.
Get the cat back!

I had a bad infestation from the neighbours cat a couple of years go.
I hoovered everything and everywhere twice daily, used boiling hot mops on floors.

I boil washed all bedding's, blankets etc... pillows and quilts were binned.

I also used different treatments. It was an absolute nightmare and so upsetting. I even found one in my airing cupboard with all of my clean towels do I had to boil wash them all and hoover the heck out of my cupboard.

Make sure you're opening all of your windows (they hate the cold) and hoovering every nook and cranny.

Be warned though, they can hibernate and cone back years later

If you don't have any animals in the house then good news because fleas can't reproduce on human blood, they'll bite you as a last resort, so they'll die out eventually (ours took about 6 weeks) but the only thing that worked for us was hoovering daily. The eggs can lay dormant up to a year but again will die out if they can reproduce!
Good luck

It’s worse if you don’t have a pet because the fleas will bite you instead. BUT they can’t reproduce on humans.

With a bad infestation the best option is a professional fumigator. Sympathies, it’s terrible.

Hello there I cat sat as well in September and ended up with fleas that were biting me. I tried the DIY treatments and they didn't work for me so I've went down the route of getting professional pest controller to treat my house. It has taken 4 treatments cycles but the fleas are dying and I am not being bitten as much anymore as the infestation is breaking down. So my advice would be professional treatment if you can as this will get rid of them faster but you will still need to deep clean your entire house for at least 2 weeks after the treatments have been completed by the pest controller.

Ugh I had a difficult time with that in the summer. The thing that worked was a combination of hoovering every day, changing the bedding (doesn't have to be excessively so - just once a week is alright), taking the cushions off the sofa and hoovering them all, and using indorex).

it’s horrific isn’t it. ive got them too.
And something else i think. i keep dining little grains of sand on me and presume they are eggs from something.

i may need to do the flea bombs. Although i have a cat so not sure if i can. Do they work on ticks and mites too if that’s what i have?

If it’s this bad personally I’d rather just pay to get pest control in, then you know it’s done properly.

I really despair that people don’t get proper vet strength prescription stuff for their pets. We have always had cats and never, ever had issues with fleas - we flea dot them religiously with vet strength flea stuff, we pay £20 a month for the vets care plan which includes a 6 month check up and flea and worming tablets 3 monthly. So many people just buy stuff from Amazon that is super cheap (and often dangerous) and then wonder why they’ve got fleas everywhere.