My cat has fleas and my mom is vacuming everything several times over. She spent almost an hour and a half vacuming one room. The cat sleeps in our beds, but is it really necessary to vacum underneath beds, in closets, disinfecting televisions, fridge handles etc.
Please include a reference website or phone number with your answer.
And you should wash all the bedding and anyplace else the cat sleeps.
Be sure to change the vacuum bag. If you don’t the vacuum will sit and the fleas can get out through thread seams and zippers.
i highly recommend you call a professional exterminator to treat the fleas inside your home……..do this and treat your cat(s) with some advantage…..(you will have to get this at the vet)
You need something like FrontlinePlus…good source and cheaper than the vets is petshed.com…I use it so I know it works. A flea comb with a cup of hot water & a little dish liquid to dip the comb in when you comb your dog/cat. LOTs of vac bags and vac everyday and remove the bag and tie it in a shopping bag and take out of the house. This will work and you should see improvements within two months. DON’T use sprays, powders, house bombs, flea collars and over the counter products. They are dangerous and are full of pesticides and can harm you and your pet! To let you know as I was given a paper from the vets…cycle of the flea…They hatch from a cocoon like a butterfly…in one week they are an adult….as a adult they lay a egg every hour of their lives up to 1-2 years they live. The eggs hatch into a larva in about two weeks…they spend three weeks as a larva and then they wrap themselves into a cocoon. In the cocoon stage you can’t kill them unless you plan on burning down your house…fire is the only way to kill them in this stage. What makes them hatch from a cocoon is vibration, heat, and all sorts of things. They need a host to feed on within one week or they will die. ( problem being is the cocoons can take up to five months to hatch! and they all hatch at different rates!) WOW that is a lot of fleas! FrontlinePlus uses two ways to kill the fleas…they first have an ingredient that paralyzes the flea so it can’t feed and it dies…it does this for two weeks. The following two weeks it just inhibits the flea eggs of the fleas that feed on them and eggs don’t hatch. This is why it takes a few months, but it does work. BTW…flea baths don’t work either and will make it so the FrontlinePlus won’t work.
Hi,
Getting rid of fleas is really easy. I work at a pet hospital and this is what we recommend:
Use advantage or frontline (drops you put on the back of your cats neck) once per month and buy a flea collar to put in your vacuum bag. (Dont put the flea collar on the cat, they are toxic and not recommended for cats anymore).
You can buy advantage at petsmart or petco, or any veterinarian. It costs around $40-50 for a 6 pack, and that will last you 6 months.
Whatever you do, do not use the over the counter flea stuff like HARTZ and BIOSPOT. They are cheaper but I promise you they have almost no margin of safety and they have killed many cats. And they really do not work.
If you use advantage and vacuum the carpet, your flea problem should literally disappear overnight. Washing your bedding like normal is fine. Flea eggs arent going to be on your drapes. Other products like flea powder and flea bombs are a pain to use and do not work. Advantage kills fleas within 12 hours and continues to kill any flea that lands on it for 4 weeks.
I really hope this helps you.
All the vacuuming is definitely necessary, but disinfecting the refrigerator and TV are not needed. I’m sure she’s already all over this, but all bedding needs to be washed in hot water, you need to bomb or spray too. Make SURE to tell your mom to seal and remove the vacuum bag each time, and get it OUT of your house, they can climb out of your vacuum cleaner. She should also pay attention to the bottom of drapes, this is a favourite place for fleas. Give your mom some understanding, some people really freak out about fleas because they are disgusting vermin. And tell your mom if she really wants to get rid of the fleas she’s going to have to vacuum every day for a few weeks.
The safest and cheapest method of getting rid of fleas is to use a mixture of boric acid and salt. The powder should be sprayed on carpets, bedding and areas frequented by pets. More information on getting rid of fleas is available at http://pests.in/fleas.html
Your mother than is doing a great job! Not only do you need to vaccum everything, you need to wash all of the bedding, it might help to spray your mattresses with something, like a light flea spray. Also, you need to have everything picked up off the floor and vaccum there too. If your cat sleeps on your beds, you need to put the animal somewhere at night until the fleas are gone. You also need to wash curtains, blinds, everything. Top to bottom. Getting rid of fleas are hard to do, but if you do this right the first time, then hopefully they will not come back. Baseboards should be disinfected, if there are any mats in the house, IE bathroom mats, kitchens, etc…need to be either cleaned of tossed out. Any sort of crevice, needs to be cleaned. All the laundry should be done at the same time as well…fleas mutiply very quickly.
Don’t spend your money on a flea collar, as they only protect the neck area and not the whole body. Flea baths, powder, sprays, whatever….
When done vaccuuming make sure that the bag is completely thrown out as soon as you are done. The fleas will reproduce in that mess.
Good luck to ya!
I had a flea infestation and had to get rid of my cats. it was that bad plus i have children. You have to launder everything vacuum under beds in closets etc but this alone wont get rid of fleas i would say treat your cat first then put him on some meds. to kill fleas like front line. When he is treated keep the cat somewhere so you can clean the house with out the the cat being re infested. Here is a good web site and good luck but act now before your whole house is infested.http://www.ehow.com/how_2439_get-rid-fle…