A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2005 My house today

So let me just give you a mental picture of what is going on in my house today. I'm sitting at the computer in my robe eating my morning bagel with peanut butter. Its nice not to have to do anything! Stephen, on the other hand, is in the shower with a screaming cat. We decided to give all three of them a flea bath. First went Coho....the worst of them all. Stephen actually just held him and got into the shower with him! He only has claws on his back feet. All of Coho's moaning and crying panicked the other two cats. Snot, the youngest, went into the bathroom when I went to get a bottle for STephen....well, she stayed in there so we wouldn't have to chase her all over the house! Ok, Coho is done and next is Snot....oh the screaming!!! Right now he is doing Thumbs, the easiest of them all. He's a booger to catch, but once you have him by the scruff, he's just a floppy thing. He's just sitting in the water and meowing every once in a while. I will have to dry him.

Stephen sprinkled dry shampoo on the carpet to try to kill any fleas that are in the carpet and to kill any eggs. I can't vacuum that up because I can't breathe that stuff in, but I will have to vacuum every day for the next week to make sure all of the eggs are caught up.

Its not like we were infested or anything, we just couldn't get rid of the buggers with that stuff that you put between their shoulder blades. We don't even know where they came from! The cats don't go outside!!

Well, after the cats are totally done and Stephen takes a shower, its off to the spare bedroom to clean it out....I'll post pictures of that room since not many of you have seen it yet. Its fishies!

Jenn...fleas will hop on your pant legs or shoes and you track them little suckers right in. A wild animal that walks across your yard will drop eggs and fleas....those hatch ....then you walk through it and wha~la you have them in the house. You can have the cleanest house with no animals and still get fleas in there.

I personally would use a fogger and leave for a few hours....in a couple weeks do the same thing. Don't go over 2 weeks or the incubation period will allow the now adults to deposit more eggs. What a cycle...fun, fun. If you use a fogger make sure you take out the batteries to your smoke alarm, turn off the gas to your water heater, remove plants, fish, animals...read the label first.

Just reducing the number of fleas the way you are doing it helps immensely, but trust me they will be
B A C K!!!!
Catlover

When I had carpet I had the yearly flea battle like you...no fun.

The best luck I ever had dealing with them was to keep up on the good drops, like frontline, and use borax in the carpets...it dries out the eggs and cuts the larva's body as they crawl around.

I'm sorry you are going through this...fleas are no fun!

I bet it's great to sit and listen, and not be the one doing the bathing!

I read somewhere that vacuuming is the best way to control them because it will pick the eggs right up. We have a bagless, so I just throw away the crap that vacuum up. I'm afraid to do a fogger because I'm not sure what kind of residue it will leave and I'm afraid to breathe anything in right now. We've gone through this before and the powder shampoo in the carpet works pretty well!! Here's hoping!

catlover - how true you are!!! we have no pets but the neighbourhood has a lot of stray dogs( dont ask - some are wild dogs and some i think are from neighbouring arab communities that are let to wander) anywawy, our house got so infested!! we were all walkiing around with flea bites, and we could see the suckers jumping around - we had to fumigate twice!!!! and we found out that we werent the only ones around here who had that problem either. since then though - no more fleas. hope i never have to deal with THAT again!

Jenn,

Hope Stephen and the kitties survived their showers. Bathing a cat is no fun at all. Fleas are so hard to get rid of but it sounds like you are well on the way!

He survived. He only got one scratch! I'm impressed...the last time I gave them a bath, I had a cat hanging from my arm by 2 claws in my skin!!! Had I nice bruise after that!

The cats are over it too. They started coming out lastnight to get pet. Their hair is sooo soft now!

Barley, l use frontline on my cat's, and never seem to get a problem, as long as they are done every three months.
Do you have the electrical flea combs over there?. You comb the fur with it and it kills any lice especially eggs.
Doreen.

I don't have fleas (no pets - too much asthma) but I used to use the electrical comb on the kids who had head lice in the clinic I worked it and it kept shocking them - not a bad shock but enough to be uncomfortable. If that's the same thing I'm not sure I would want to be around a cat with claws that was getting shocked.