Are there any effective non prescription flea treatments?

[Fleahelpneeded]

Gah! Both the cat and the dog have fleas and the vet can’t see them to prescribe anything until next Friday! New regulations are apparently in force from 1/09/23 that the vet has to see the pet to prescribe and then can prescribe for 12 months without seeing them again.

clearly I have no one to blame for this but myself, I’ve been very cavalier in my flea treatment routine… but waiting over a week to get flea treatment seems like forever!

can anyone recommend something effective I can buy without seeing the vet? I know a lot of over the counter treatments aren’t very good…

Can you no longer buy e.g frontline from pets at home, kind of the animal equivalent of going to the pharmacist as opposed to the GP?

The very first time I flea treated my very first cat I used Johnsons flea tablets. It worked very effectively. This was almost 20 years ago so perhaps someone with more up to date experience may be able to comment. I only use felpreva now which is prescription only.

Get some Spot On flea treatment from the pet shop.

Will work immediately and will cost a lot less than the vets.

Prevention is always better than cure. I have a cat and treat him with frontline on the back of the neck, every 3 months. Amazon Prime is your friend! Hoover the whole house every day for 2 weeks and wash all bedding, blankets etc. If its a cat confine it to one room for 2 weeks or just let him/her in to feed. A dog needs to be kept in one room after treatment. There is a powder (shake and vac type) you can buy called Beaphar sold in the range. Leave that down overnight. You have to be really strict to get rid of them.

There are 2 Frontline products, a blue and a green one. I think the blue is just called Frontline and the green is called Frontline Combo. The blue is available over the counter and the green is available on prescription.

Unfortunately if your pets have fleas it's the green one you need. The blue one is a preventative rather than a treatment. The green is also more expensive.

My understanding (but don’t actually know where I heard this from) is that anything you can buy without a prescription is no longer effective as the fleas have developed some sort of immunity, does anyone know if that’s right?

it’s so hard to get a vets appointment already and now the new regs will make it harder, I think! (I wouldn’t care but the vet saw the cat last week and is still refusing to prescribe without seeing her again 😖)

Johnsons 4fleas tablets (amazon) are a good short term fix. They kill the fleas on the cats, although they do nothing long term. The fleas on them literally drop off dead within a couple of hours of giving them the tablet. We crush them and mix them in dreamies creamies.

I expect you heard it from a vet . . .

More than likely! @EmilyBrontesGhost

This is really good. Johnson's is defunct round here, super fleas!

I can only recommend for the cat, but I’ve found Advantage good in the past.

I’d also recommend Indorex. Spray the house before you leave for a few hours dog walk and with the cat shut outside, then a really good vacuum each day.

The bonus of the spot-on treatments is that any fleas in the house will return to your animals to feed, and the spot-on is effective for a few weeks so keeps killing them.

It’s why it’s easier to get rid of fleas in a house that still has animals in.

we use Advantage and find it effective.

The new regulations are a pain in the ass, we are stuck in the same situation.

Apparently vet would need to see our two cats for a health check before being able to get the flea treatment, which would cost £100 (£50 per cat) and then the cost of the treatment on top of that. Told them no thank you, we would just go to pets at home...

I’ve just used front line plus and then treated the whole house with indorex and it worked fine.

I am no longer subscribing to buying stuff from the vets. I was outraged to be told they want £47+ vat for a 5 minute check to prescribe flea treatment. Absolutely outrageous

I didn’t think the front line plus would work, but it has. As has the indorex. Noticed an improvement within 24 hours.

I should have asked how much it would cost for the vet appointment, I was too freaked out by the fleas to think straight!

thanks to everyone who’s recommended treatments, I’m going to give one of the over the counters a go, plus the Indorex (Amazon is my friend here 😝)

Advantage from pets at home & johnsons flea tablet!

I spoke to my vet nurse friend and she confirmed that front line and the others do work. Because they kill the fleas they can not build an immunity (because they are dead). But because people don’t religiously apply the treatment monthly, or treat the house regularly, new fleas come in and breed and the cycle begins again.
also the eggs hatch, so you have to do the house for fortnightly a few times to stop the cycle of life

Thanks for this post OP - I wanted to ask the same thing. We have been adopted by a stray cat and the vet can’t/won’t see us until the end of this month. We did actually take her into the vets to be scanned for a chip, and were told there was no point buying flea treatment that wasn’t via prescription. But the poor thing is scratching like crazy and I don’t want an infestation in the house (probably too late, I realise..).

A seresto collar is another option that is over the counter. It lasts for 8/9 months but isn’t the prettiest thing and some cats won’t tolerate a collar.

Fleas are becoming resistant to Frontline.

Fleas build resistance as a species because the ones that don’t die are the ones that breed - natural selection and all that.

I googled this as I’ve recently stopped the £18 a month my vet wants for the healthy pet club or whatever it’s called (3 cats and a dog adds up). There are enough studies online casting doubt on the “fleas are resistant to frontline” idea to make me think that PaH treatments are probably fine. You have to watch the roundworms though - the prescription meds treat those too but the ones you buy don’t always have them in, so check in case you need a separate one for roundworm (you always need a separate tapewormer, I think).

Advantage still works well for mine.

I avoid any fipronil based products like frontline as I've heard so many stories of it not working.

Frontline doesn’t work for ours now but Advantage does.

My friend used Capstar flea tablets

We use Advantage on all our animals (three cats and a dog) and we've never had fleas.