To think expensive flea treatment should actually kill fleas?

[Alanisadick]

Some of you may remember my threads about Alan the cat pissing in shopping bags and infesting my house with rodents.

This time, it’s not exactly his fault, but he and his sister Hattie are bloody riddled with fleas. I diligently apply advocate to them every month from the vets, at just over £20 a month, and as far as I can tell it does absolutely fuck all. DD1 seems to be susceptible to flea bites and always has scabby ankles, for some reason they don’t seem to bite me and dd2. Have indorexed the house and hoovered, but the key problem as far as I can tell is that the flea stuff doesn’t actually kill the fleas on the cats.

I bought a flea comb a couple of weeks ago and I am doing daily ‘nit checks’ on the cats, and finding many live fleas on them each day, despite the fact that in theory they should still be covered by the advocate.

The vet nurse suggested trying the tablets which apparently 90% of cats will just eat like a treat. Well guess what, mine are both in the 10% that won’t go anywhere near them, so they ended up going in the bin. Alan sulks with me for 2 days after I put the spot on on him, honestly I don’t think I could bring myself to wrestle with him to get a tablet down his neck (I use spot on wormer too). And driving them both to the vets every month to get them to administer the tablets would be mightily inconvenient as well as distressing for them (they are not fans of the vets).

They are both hairy as fuck which I feel could be part of the problem, maybe if they were short haired the fleas wouldn’t have so many places to hide?

Any ideas? Feel like I might as chuck 20 quid in the bin each month for all the good the advocate does.

My vets have changed to Bravecto too, the advocate used to work fine but lost its effectiveness. So far Bravecto has been fine, but I'm sure we'll have to change again in the fullness of time.

The problem sounds like the fleas are laying eggs in your home. Pointless treating just the cats. You need to absolutely kill all eggs/fleas in all furniture and surfaces. I mean a HUGE clean. Then treat cats. Then clean.

And all the tablets do is kill each flea on the cat in that moment. It doesn't account for the ones hatching from the house/outside. Outdoor cats are buggers for fleas. If they're indoor you can definitely get this under control.

Put a flea collar in the vacuum bag to kill any you hoover up.

I have to indorex the shit out of the house annually in combination with spot on. It’s worse with outdoor cats, mine is thankfully housebound.

LOL at the “cat will take a pill nicely”. 😂 I’d lose an eye!

And as for tablet just hold your cat,open it's mouth, pop in and they swallow them. 😂😂😂

Yeah, right. We can't handle our cat like that, she was neglected as a kitten so handling is a raw deal... our go to is to crush the tablet up and mix it with tuna or other strong tasting fish. If she turns up her nose at it we just leave it down, she'll eat it when she's hungry enough.

We did try the Advocate but handling her is an issue and we were never quick enough to get it on her neck when she wasn't expecting it as she is far quicker than we are. The vet got it on her by spreading the fur with his fingers and dab, spread new section and dab, spread next section and final dab. So neat and quick but we couldn't achieve this, our cat is putty in the vet's hands but not in ours

We used Indorex for a flea infestation, the entire can over the entire house, it seemed to do the trick as we had no more problems after that (although that wasn't our cat, it was a neighbour's one that kept coming into our house until we banned him).

Get a PHC - monthly pet health club - which will include the worming and flea treatment as well as their injections. Also try a steam cleaner on carpets and sofas etc to kill any eggs that are hatching. Brush your cats regularly, I put a pair of grooming gloves on so I don't get bitten too much when she rolls over to play bite

The vet tried to give my last cat a worming tablet once. After he'd spat it out the for the umpteenth time she said "shall we try a spot on...?"

Another vote for Bravecto

You've not met my cat have you?

We can't hold him, and we don't go near his mouth after I had a serious bite wound from him. We long ago realised that if he ever needed regular tablets he'd just die as it would be impossible.

He's still my baby though.

I wasn't the one who made the comment about it being easy!! I was laughing at it, 😂

You need 2 people to do spot on or tablets.

1 person to hold the cat firmly, the other to apply the medication to the correct area of the cat!

Person 1 sit on floor and hold cat across body with one arm and hold their jaws open with other hand, person 2 drop tablet at back of mouth. Stroke their throat gently to prompt the swallowing reflex.

The medication does not kill the eggs which is why you need to repeat the treatments

You need Bravecto. Brilliant stuff.

Sorry @SoupDragon I realised after I'd posted.

Other cat I can chuck the tablet on the floor and she'll dash over and eat it straight away, just in case it's a treat.

The two extremes of cats and tablets.

I had this problem recently and became quite the expert. Fleas don't jump off a host, they only get into soft furnishings/carpets because they have fallen off. A mature flea will die after 4-5 days of not having fed from a host (humans don't count, our blood protein levels are not adequate) so if possible either keep cat outside or isolate in a certain room.
The best way to get on top of an infestation is to comb every few hours. I found that dampening the comb was more effective. I used front line first which didn't seem to do anything then 2 weeks later Advantage. I restricted dcat to downstairs and during that time washed (at 60 degrees) all bedding, duvets, throws etc and sprayed mattresses and hoovered everything. Eggs on carpets will hatch into larvae and they can stay alive a few weeks without feeding so really important to keep spraying/hoovering AND not giving cat access to these rooms. Within 24 hours of treatment adults should start dying but I found it took a good bit longer. Be really religious about combing, don't give the adults a chance to lay eggs. Keep this up for 4 weeks, it was only about 2 weeks after second treatment that I was confident that we were in the clear.
Also, spray EVERYWHERE. I found larvae down the seams of the leather sofa that the cat rarely even sat on 🤢

We bought Stronghold plus from our vet for our cats and that seemed to work, we also used a household flea spray such as Indorex or Acclaim. Fleas are really difficult to treat due to the fact they can adapt to the treatments so its best to use different ones to help prevent this. Diatomaceous earth pest grade is also great, its safe to use on pets and you can use it over the floors and along crevices where the little blighters like to hide as larvae.

Hi @Alanisadick

The only thing that got rid of a flea infestation in our house was a powder called diatomaceous earth. You get it in big tubs from eg eBay for around £25 and you have to cover your carpets or soft furnishings with it using a sieve. Also put on skirting boards any any nooks and crannies. It is like an off pink colour. Then you have to brush it in then hoover a day later if I remember correctly (sorry, it was about 8 years ago now). It was a horrible, dusty and messy process (and DH wore a mask while doing it - we did it a room at a time, so we could avoid the room being treated for 24hours) but it did get rid of them. It works by desiccating the fleas, so basically dries them up and kills them and the eggs. It was a last resort for us because I ended up so fed up with being bitten I slept in the car one night while pregnant. Also, annoyingly, my DH wasn't getting bitten, just me.

We also bought these lamps which you plug in and the fleas are attracted to the heat of the bulb but there is a circular pad before they reach the lamp and they get stuck to it and die.

I feel your pain, it was an ordeal going through it, but we got there in the end.

Also, we appear to have cat twins 🐈‍⬛

The flea treatments OTC are very very toxic and won't really work very well. Lots of fleas are immune now.

Essentially they are nerve gas on a smaller scale. So you do not want to put this stuff on your dog, be around it and especially not with kids around.

Use Neem, I have an oil and also a shampoo. Apply the oil 1-2 a month, and wash dog every week with it. No fleas. Effective and not toxic af.

In addition, wash any bedding and blankets on sofas regularly.

Sorry, photo wouldn't attach earlier

Call your local councils pest department. They should offer a fumigation service.

We’ve used Indorex in the house when our dog had fleas and have moved from Frontline to Bravecto. Seems to do the job.

You have GOT to treat the cat internally & externally at the same time or it's pointless.

Internally? For fleas??

My vet recommended a spray (cant recall the bloody name🙈) what you spray on your furniture etc to get rid of them , because we often just treat our pets and not their surroundings .

Trouble with that approach is that you need to let the infestation happen before you address it.

And given that the pupal stage of the life cycle (which is inherently resistant to any environmental treatments) can last a year or more, there is potential for a really long battle with fleas once they're in the house.

It's the larvae that get me. Will never get over finding dozens of little grey maggots slithering all over the desk in my childhood bedroom - one of our cats liked to sleep there! 😓