Fleas!!

[PoppySeedBun18]

Ugh, so DH has two cats (they were here when I moved in, they don’t like me much and the feeling is mutual). They spend a lot of time outdoors and they are constantly getting fleas! We try and de-flea them all the time but they don’t like being handled so just run out the cat flap (we tried locking the flap and the cat just ran through breaking it).

We have a small flat and the cats just roam around getting fur and fleas on everything; sofa, bed, DD’s cot, carpets. I’ve spent all week vacuuming and flea spraying but I’m still finding them. My legs are bitten to hell and I can barely sleep from the itching. This morning I found a flea in DD’s hair (she’s 5 months) and that was the last straw.

I’m fed up with the bloody things and the flat is too small for us to live together. Our kitchen and living room are open plan so I can’t keep them out, and although I shut the bedroom doors DH never does, so they end up climbing on everything. Every summer I have to deal with all the mice and birds they bring in, both alive and dead, and their food stinks and ends up all over the floor. DD will be starting to crawl soon and it’s already giving me headaches! I’m normally an animal lover but I really wished the cats would go out one day and never come back!

WIBU to tell DH he has to do something more permanent to help the situation?

Hoovering is one the worst things you can do with fleas - they breed like crazy and then spread around the house.

You need to get a flea treatment and a good one. There’s several ones you can get from vets or specialist pet shops which also attract fleas on to the animals to kill as many as possible. If you have an infestation in the house then I’d arrange for a flea bomb. Exterminators usually do one and they kill pretty much everything.

Pets at home have a thing where they post you out the flea treatments monthly as it’s important to keep up to date. Make sure they are wormed too!

You definitely need to talk with your husband though! Sadly I’ve not a lot of advice there though.

Vet strength flea treatment and indorex spray for the house

Try and deflea them all the time?!
Why? You need a vet prescribed effective product that you use monthly. No more.
Indorex the house.
Problem solved.
How does hoovering make fleas breed?!

Good luck. Our little prick bought them in this summer and we had to bomb the house 6 times. Fucking nightmare.

Indorex is a million times better than any flea bombs but you need to cut them off at the source by getting treatment from the vet for the cats

Hoovering can encourage them to hatch but the eggs would still be there if you didn't. I treat mine monthly too with stuff from the vet

Wolfie we aren’t able to catch the cats in order to put the flea treatment on them. We get the flea stuff but it can take us days to actually get it on the buggers, by which point the fleas have moved from the cat to our furniture.

Get the cats treated properly at the vets. The injection is good. If you keep on top of this, the fleas will go and not come back.
In the short term, get flea spray from the vets too. Move dd out for the weekend and spray everything. Be prepared to do this a couple of times.
Get dry food and set feeding times for the cats. Once they've eaten, wash the bowls and don't give in to cat-pressure for more till the next tea time. The Vet will weight the cats, recommend a food and tell you how much to feed them.

Good luck!

Use Advantage spot on treatment, every 1 or 2 months according to the instructions, cheaper online but get some from the vets tomorrow for immediate use. Get spray from the vets and treat the whole house. Once you get rid, if you keep treating the cats regularly you shouldn't get any more.

There's only ever a small proportion on the cats. Treating them means that any fleas that jump on to feed will be killed

The bane of my life! There's a new product - a collar - called Foresto. I bought for the dog from Amazon because it's a prescription item only and I can't be doing with the £65 for the vet to tell me the dog has fleas. I know this. I'm pretty sure they do a cat one too. It's expensive but it lasts 6 - 8 months and I can tell you that this is true. They've saved my sanity and they do work out cheaper in the long run.

I got a pest controller in to do my house. I just couldn’t seem to get on top of them and the treatment was making my little guy poorly.
It cost me about £50 but it was money well spent.
Ask your vet if they know anyone, or try Rentokil or a local firm.

Also Indorex is around £11 on eBay but an astonishing £27 in pet shops - it's very good stuff though

You can’t be effectively treating the cats if you are having to do it ‘all the time’.

You need to hoover beforehand then use the good flea spray from the vet- hoover afterwards.

You need a good vet treatment and repeat it as often as the instructions dictate - we use Bravecto

You need to catch the cats. If they come in the house, then you can catch them. Take them to the vet for a Program injection which will render any flea that bites them infertile and then use a strong, vet prescribed, spot on treatment. The fleas on them will die and fleas in the house will prefer to bite the cats so will seek them out, jump on them and die after they bite. Then if you struggle to get another spot on on them a month later you have the injection as a back up which stops the breeding cycle.

We had this problem one year, it turned out the fleas in our area were immune to frontline so we had to move to a different product with a different active ingredient. It only took one treatment to clear once we figured it out

@GoldenBlue
Our vet said they aren’t but that Frontline required the house to be treated every 6 months. I had never heard of that.
Cats should be in at night. So you shouldn’t need to “catch” them. Are they feral?
You must treat monthly or you will be infested. Shut cat in a room. Grab and dose.

I agree with others recommending a strong flea treatment and indorex spray.

It also sounds like you need to do some training with your cats to get them used to being handled, and having a flea treatment applied, it might take a little bit of work but will make it easier for everyone.

Also hoovering does not make fleas breed, you should be hoovering multiple times a day, every day, and wash everything you can, use indorex and apply flea treatment to really get rid of them.

I think most cat owners have had the dreaded flea war, stay positive you will soon be rid of the pesky things

Following with interest.
My two young cats got fleas (and ticks!) after their very first short trip out of the cat flap (we back onto woodland crammed full of foxes, badgers, deer and hedgehogs etc). Despite their monthly spot on treatment from the vets, daily hoovering with boric acid in the bag (destroys exoskeleton of fleas and larvae), and frequent hot laundering and drying of soft furnishings and textiles, they keep getting reinfested. I am convinced that they pick them up outdoors and that I will never eliminate the source of the reinfestation.

What’s the spot on?

Whoops I didnt mean hoovering makes them breed just that it doesn’t actually kill them. My sister assumed for months that hoovering was enough to kill them and suffered from an awful infestation for months.

You need to use a flea treatment from the vet (not something over the counter as the fleas are building up a tolerance to some formula) on both cats 4 weekly. Stop trying to de flea with a brush and encourage the cats to be petted. I do the flea treatment when the cat is asleep. Then any fleas in the house feed off the cat and die. You then need to wash all soft furnishings, bedding etc on 60. Hoover daily and empty the bag outside as the vibrations can cause eggs to hatch. You also need to spray the house. You'll have a really shit day dealing with it but if you do all that and keep up the flea treatment then it'll do the trick. We had the same and this worked. I was so annoyed because I'd actually been using frontline! Having fleas to that degree is also very distressing for the cat so this does need sorting.

Wolfie , 'spot on' is just the type of treatment that is applied as a drop on the skin, usually at the back of the neck, from a small single-use vial, as opposed to an injection or an oral medication, such as a tablet or syrup. There are many different 'spot on' treatments; mine also get Droncit (worming) as a spot on treatment.

My cat is always picking up fleas and every summer i have a nightmare trying to deal with it....but thankfully the cold weather will start to kill them off too....for the house i use Indorex and on the cat i use Advantage.....dont bother with anything on the shelf in a supermarket or Wilko it doesn't work and is a waste of money.

We had a horrific flea infestation a couple of summers ago, to the point we had to dump a perfectly good sofa because it was infested with fleas and eggs.
Bravecto is the only treatment I'll use now. Lasts 3 months a dose. We also used a spray for the sort furnishings, but I can't remember the name.