Getting Rid of Fleas?

It is almost impossible to get rid of fleas from your house. They are tiny but a pain, as well as the itch! The following answer is a bit lengthy but explains why fleas will always be a problem. It also explains what you can try to keep ahead of fleas in your house.

My husband is an entomologist so I speak with first hand knowledge and experience.

The first and very important step is to take your pet to your veterinarian to make certain the only problem is fleas. There are many other medical problems that could be affecting your pet in addition to a flea infestation.

The humble cat (cat, dog, etc.) flea is one of the most abundant and widespread species on Earth. You may have noticed that your dog and cat often choose different places to sleep in your house and outside. Your cat may have five or six favorite inside spots (usually in the sun) and outside even more. Many animals choose several places to sleep to avoid fleas. They might sleep in one spot for a few days and then another for a day or two. This sleep pattern breaks the flea life cycle and does reduce the effectiveness of flea attacks as adult fleas only live for a few days. However, some can live up to one hundred days in a good food environment. As you will see, the flea has a complicated life and you and your pet are invited!

Flea eggs do not stay on your pet, they quickly drop or roll off as they do not stick to anything. The fleas you find in your house hatched from the flea eggs that fell off of your pet. Flea eggs are tiny and opaque white or almost colorless. The fleas you may see on your cat or dog are immature fleas from eggs on the floor or outside that hatched into fleas and jumped back onto your dog.

You will also see (many!) small black dots on your dog but these are only flea feces.

The flea eggs in your home and outside are the real problem. Just one female flea can produce 40-50 eggs per day. The eggs fall off into your house and outside so, either way, your dog or cat will then again attract the immature and adult fleas both inside and outside which are the children from flea parents that may still be living on your cat or dog.

Any dish detergent bath may wash away or possibly kill some fleas on your pet, however, not all fleas are killed. In a bath many migrate up to the head and ear area and then, once the bath is over, travel back to their favorite spots, usually on the back. If you use dish detergent, you can seriously dry the animals skin and may cause skin rashes, an allergic reaction, etc., and you are not addressing the real problem. The thousands of flea eggs that exist all the time in your house and outside hatch and then jump back onto your dog or cat (and you!). So, you and your pets are locked into the everlasting cycle in the life of fleas.

A search online for how to kill fleas brings up many ideas for bathing, applying natural and awful sprays, etc., but these only address the fleas on your pet. Rarely do they address the bigger problem as a whole. You can check this site for answers that address your pet, your home and the outside. As you will see, flea prevention is a much larger problem than just giving your cat or dog a bath.

www.thebugsquad.com/.../

If you've had the cat checked by a vet and there are no health issues, you could try giving the cat brewers yeast, in either tablet or powder form. Years ago, my vet told me about this, when my cats got fleas from a dog I had groomed. The brewers yeast makes the animal's blood taste bad to the fleas, so that they leave the cat (or dog) alone and go elsewhere. It worked for us, and one of my cats loved the tablet so much, she would pick it out of her food and eat it first!

If the pet doesn't like the tablet enough to eat it, try crushing the tablet or using the powdered form, and mixing it into the food. We didn't do anything special to rid the house of fleas, but we had no carpeting for them to hide in, so that might have had a lot to do with it. Good luck!