best treatment for fleas please. please please please!!!

[Mytwopenceworth]

i am being eaten alive! four cats and my house has become infested! i used sprays & powders round the house and those litle liquid capsule things you squeeze onto the back of the cats neck, boiled the bedding etc obviously and thought i had it covered, but the bastards wont die.

i swear they are feeding more on me than the cats! i have taken to carrying an old fork round cos its the only thing that settles the itch! i am scratching so much i have started to bleed!

what else can i try?

Which capsule things do you use on their necks? I tried some herbal ones which you can get from petshop/supermarket which didn't work very well but frontline drops from my vet seem to work well and fast.

M2P,
The two times I had the house really infested, I had to use a "bomb" thing that they sell in the US. It is kind of a homemade detetization thing, IYSWIM....

Whatever is available in the UK, you will need to treat house and cats at the same time, I'm afraid. Once the fleas are in your couch, carpet, etc... the cats are not the main vehicle for them... And you are right... you do have much more blood than your cats...

I feel for you so much - we have been there with a dog, 14 cats and some evilly flea-infested 2nd hand furniture.
Frontline really does seem to work (although it's horribly chemical, but at least it avoids spraying the place with poison).
Neem is said to be wonderful, but I don't know quite how to use it. Apparently fleas, etc will starve themselves to death before touching something with neem oil on.
Good luck!

We had a similar thing with our two cats....it was awful! We used one of those bomb things and then left the house for a few hours.
Magic. Never saw a little bugger after that!
Obviously, kicked cats out whilst bombing the house!! Used frontline on the cats, which is also magic.

When we had pets we found that the best thing was to give them something in their food (prob from the vet, but possibly available in teh supermarket, sorry, don't remember) and to have them wear flea collars all the time from early spring to late autumn.

Recently we moved into a house which turned out to be badly infested with fleas, and, on Mumsnet advice, I got a spray from a local vet - expensive, about £15 a can, but veyr effective. We had tried all sorts of things, but the only thing that worked was the spray and lots and lots of frequent hoovering. Oh, and ripping up the carpets in the worst rooms.

Go see the vet and get an insecticide from them. It is more expensive than in the supermarket, but much stronger and will actualy work

We tried all sorts of stuff first....total waste of money. Get stuff from the vet

PITA isnt it???

Where do you get the flea bomb things? My house is infested and the spray from the vets only keeps them away for a week. I remember a friend had them when we were young, but no idea where to get one. Can anyone help?

You will not be able to buy anything stronger than you can get from the vet. It is a prescription sort of a thing IYSWIM.

If the stuff from the vet doesn't shift the little things, it might be worth phoning pest control at the council

You can get the bombs in teh supermarket, but they're not always called 'bombs', sometimes they're called 'foggers' or something similar.

The spray from the vet really does work, but it depends on you vacuuming every single corner of the house regularly - shifting furniture, curtains etc, and using the nozzle attachment to go along the sskirting boards and into the airing cupboard.

The spray kills the fleas in every stage of their life cycle, except for the cocoons. The vibrations from mammal movement triggers the cocoons to open up and release the adult fleas, which is why you have to vacuum frequently - both to trigger the cocoons and to get rid of all the hatchlings. The spray will kill the hatchlings for up to a year after application, but until they die they can bite you and also lay more eggs, unless you vacuum them up.

You need to empty the vacuum cleaner after every hoovering, and spray inside it each time.

frontline all the way- never let me down.
(have two mutts)

once the house is infested....OMG.
my mums house got infested and she had to hoover everywhere. every place imaginable.

i would think it would be much much easier to get the place fumigated by the pros.

thanks everyone for the tips, i am declaring war on the little buggers!!

Frontline from the vets is the best! its one of those squeezy ones, but a lot stronger, and lasts a few months. My two dogs play in the garden, but havent had fleas at all ( touch wood ). Not sure about the house though.

fronline on the dog or cat in little pippets is great, then i go over my floors and bedding with a steam cleaner about once a month, doesn't take long, ( extra ten mins on vaccuuming) and it kills anything else in the way too ! LOL