Fleas!

[123andaway]

In the last few days we seem to have had an outbreak of fleas .

Myself, DS1 and DD are being eaten alive (although strangely they are not touching DS2?)

We have one cat who is frontlined, and I have sprayed the house from top to bottom with a decent spray.

Is there anything thing else I can do?

bumping for you

just found a flea on one of my new cats. he also has so much flea dirt and loads of white flakey bits. are these white flakey bits eggs? the other new one prob has loads too although i haven't been able to get close enough to him yet.

both my new cats smell really musty and horrible is this related to fleas?

i frontlined them sunday when i first got them so what else can i do?

tomorrow will buy a flea comb and try to comb all 3 cats daily to see if that can get rid of a few more.

will also get a household spray.

i cant stop itching now i have actually seen one!! i feel like i have a skanky house now

I think you need to have a really good hoover and wash and hoover all linen such as sofa, bedding etc that the cat has come into contact with. When was the cat last frontlined? We do ours every month as per instructions.

Yes I frontline her every month and have done so for ages. They've never been a problem before, but in the last week we are all getting bitten a couple of times aday, and Mog is scratching!

I'll go round and do the house again, and put a spray on the cat and hope that helps.

Has anyone tried those sticky flea trap things - they are like a dome with a light and a sticky sheet at the bottom? Do they work? Im not sure I want them sitting around the house though! I can just imagine warning guests not to fall over the flea trap!!

when i was younger my dad lived in a flat and his cats had fleas. he used these flea traps with the sticky bit and the light. he kept it under the bed and then in the morning the sticky bit would be covered in dead fleas!

This is what I find works.

Use a good quality house flea spray.
Wash all material that the animals have contact with. Cushions, throws, bedding etc. Eggs hatch (I think) about every 3 days. So the washing is done every 3 days. Do it all at once, so the cat is not moving eggs from one place to another.

I do not bathe the cat, but I do use a mild solution of white vinegar and bicarb (which I read dehydrates the fleas) and baby shampoo in warm water. Using a comb regularly dipped into the water solution, the coat gets wetter, the fleas cannot jump around in the wet hair and the fleas eventually end up in the water. When it is very bad, do this once a day and a regular brushing once a day and then go down to once a day with the solution with no additional brushing and gradually reduce further. Do not stop until there are no fleas for several days. Eggs can be harder to get rid of. The benefit of this was the cat's coat was the glossiest and smoothest its ever been and the cat smelled lovely too.

The vibrations of the vacuum cleaner make the eggs hatch apparently. Some people swear by regular vacuuming. The opposite works for me. I vacuum thoroughly once to pick up eggs and fleas (and flea spray and wrap the waste from the vacuum) and do not vacuum again until it is under control. In between I use a sweeping brush or dustpan and brush.

When it is under control then I start vacuuming again. You will know when this is because any fleas on the cat are very small (young) and not all over the place and gradually they disappear altogether.

I brush the cat every day now. I also use a great brush called a 'Zoom Groom' which really gets to the under layers of hairs, so removes some flea hiding places.

The cat has a permanant flea collar now which I change every few months.

There is no quick process that I know of but having had to deal with this issue several times (but not recently) until I found a solution that worked for me, I know how nasty this issue is and hope that this post helps. Good luck!

We have two cats and a dog and this is the only year in 4 that we have not had a major flea problem. In short, we no longer use Frontline (or Frontline Combo) as I have no confidence in it at all. Instead, we are now using Stronghold which is doing the trick.
last year we spent almost, yikes, £400 on vets, sprays etc (our dog is allergic to the bites and was driven insane with scratching.)
Skooch is a good spray as you just use it on areas the cat / dog has been sleeping - it coats the eggs etc in sillicone and they cannot hatch. It's cheaper on the net, as is the RIP flea spray, use that too all over the house, and make sure you get every single corner, and take up floorboards and use those bomb things if you have an old house as the fleas and eggs can fall through the gaps. Regular baths are good, although not really practical with cats, and your vet can also give you some tablets which make the fleas jump off the animal and die.
It may take a while - seemingly forever! - but you'll get there! Good luck!