katerzyna@hotmail.com asked 5 years ago
Hi there,
I’m a big dumb idiot and I didn’t treat my 5 month old kitten with the prescribed flea prevention treatment (drops) before taking him outside, and yep, I now have found fleas in my home.
The thing is, I’m reading a lot of horror stories about fleas, however so far my flea problem seems extremely mild by comparison. The first day I found fleas on my kitten I found 3, and quite a bit of flea dirt. This was after flea combing him from nose to tail. I immediately treated him with the drops I’d forgotten to give him from our last vet visit. I then purchased the “4flea” oral tablets which I understand can be used with the prescribed drops and I have been giving him one oral tablet as per the instructions every day for the last three days. For those last three days, I’ve been brushing him down with a flea comb twice a day. The morning brush has turned up nothing everyday, the evening brush turned up two fleas the first day, one the second day, and one tonight as well. This is during about 15 minute full body brush sessions with a flea comb. He’s scratching much less (very rarely) as well. But.. I know how quickly these things can get out of hand. I’ve been hoovering every second day, have been running everything I can through the wash (set to hot), and I’ve ordered an IGR based room spray. Anything I can’t wash (I have a lot of wool blankets) I’ve been chucking in my freezer. Am I over reacting? Under reacting? Should I be doing more? Less? Does what I’ve seen qualify as an infestation? In the future, are monthly drops the best form of prevention? I’ve never had to deal with fleas before and have no idea what I should be feeling right now.
KM answered 5 years ago
Update:
I found ground zero. This morning after writing my post last night I pulled apart my apartment and found flea city in my sofa. Well, I say flea city, it was 2 adults but then a bustling metropolis of wriggling larva.
Two things I want to say here: 1. This is actually kind of a weird relief, because I think a lot of anxiety that comes with dealing with home parasitic invasions is not knowing what you’re up against. I was washing and hoovering everything without feeling like it was making a difference – because it probably kind of wasn’t. It wasn’t until after I really read the information about flea behaviour on your website that I began to really “think like a flea”, and consider where they might be hiding. Knowing a bit more now about the places they prefer makes me more confident that I can treat for them, more confidently assess how their population is being affected, and that I’m not up against an invisible parasitic population I can’t seem to do anything about. So thank you so much for providing this useful information on flea behaviour/breeding biology. 2. I know you don’t support the idea of salting a home……………. and I understand why. Having a look at researchgate there are no reputable papers on flea eradication that actually mention any homeopathic flea remedies that are successful (diotemeceous earth maaaybe, but really that’s not great for anyone’s respiratory tract, is it?). However, even knowing this I did salt my home, I think mostly because I felt anxious and wanted to do something before my room spray arrived. My first thought after spreading salt everywhere was “oh, well that was idiotic, now I have to clean all of this up”, but then I realized that actually, the salt was a really good visual aid for assisting in figuring out where the flea eggs and frass (and therefore the early flea instars and pupae) were gathering. All of the nooks and crannies the salt fell into into my sofa helped lead me to the flea population within it. A lot of the comments I’ve read on this page lead me to believe people suffering from flea infestations think that fleas are magic – they come out of no where, and stay for no evident reason even though the home inhabitants are doing everything in their power to rid themselves of fleas. I myself was feeling a little bit like this. It wasn’t until I did this weird salt ritual that I could really see that actually, there was a ton of tiny little crevices and corners that I didn’t see before, and certainly didn’t clean. Now that I have -really looked- at my home space (and REALLY hoovered it), I’m confident that I’ll also be able to shortly spray these areas effectively and that this should really speed along the eradication process. Also I was really reassured by the location of the fleas. Like you outline in your website, they don’t really dig in super deep into places. Yes, the pupae are extremely difficult to remove from carpeting, but on my sofa which has a tightly woven cover, none of the larva had penetrated below the surface. All of their food (the flea frass and eggs) and larva and pupa were just sitting on the top layer of the sofa, in the little nooks and crannies. So now that I know they’re there, I feel like I can hoover these spots really easily. So to recap: I’v treated my cat with drops, and an oral tablet to remove adult fleas immediately while protecting more long term against further flea bites. I’ve REALLY hoovered every inch of my home, washed all of the soft materials my cat frequents with hot water (and will continue to do this bi-weekly, or weekly, depending on the material and how often my cat hangs out on it), frozen any fabrics that require dry cleaning (wool blankets), I’ve rented a carpet cleaner to give my carpets and upholstery a really good scrub, and ordered a IGR based room spray to handle any other individuals that remain after this cleaning regimen. Am I missing anything? I found it really helpful to make a checklist while reading your web page of the steps to take to address the different levels of protection. I recommend fellow readers do the same.
I should add I had the vet prevention drops just as part of my regular vet visit – I have had no reason to think the kitten has had fleas for more than a couple weeks.