Cat Fleas

Cat fleas can be a pesky problem but with the right attitude and approach they can be quickly and efficiently eradicated.

How Do You Know If Your Cat Has Fleas

Get a fine metal comb and gently run it through your cat's fur. You may groom out some fleas.

But as cat's have a tendency to remove the little blighters before you can get to them you could well find none at all.

However, now follow these steps

• ensure you have a well dampened tissue to hand.
• as you comb the fur if you disturb any dark specs drop them onto the tissue.
• wait for a minute or two and if the specs start to diffuse into a reddy rusy colour then your cat has fleas.

What is this stuff?

Cat fleas feed and digest cat blood. What you are seeing is the waste that passes through them. It is a dried spec of your cats blood.

I Don't Like Fleas How Can I get Rid Of Them?

Your cat is going to need treatment.

In the worst cases cat's can actually suffer anaemia, and this needs vet attention.

But for a small flea infestation self medication can quickly get rid of the pests.

Opinion has moved away from pest control collars as this is simply seen as hanging poison from around the neck of your pet.

More acceptable treatments are now widely available.

Spot on preparations, aerosols, oral meds, and pump sprays are alternatives widely available at the time of writing.

• Spot ons are applied as drops, a couple of drops to the scruff of the neck will do the job
• Oral medication. These are given to your cat and get into the bloodstream. When a flea grabs a bite to eat from your cat it's rendered infertile. The eggs it lays will not hatch. This is also how injectable methods work
• Pump sprays are simple enough to understand, pump the insecticide onto your cat.

Fact: Cat fleas will spread quickly throughout a warm and carpeted home.

For this reason alone treating the pet is not enough, it will simply become reinfected again by the fleas in the home.

Riding Your Home Of Cat Fleas

Surprisingly fleas spend quite a proportion of their life away from their pet host.

You may not notice anything unless you remove a flea carrying pet from your home, when you may well encounter flea bites on your lower legs.

This is simply because now the host has been removed you are now the only food source in the area.

Without treatment these fleas will die off in a matter of months as they need the pet to breed succesfully.

However, if you can't wait that long, and who could, then there are measures you can put in place to combat this menance.

• A regime of vacuuming will probably do the most good.
• Treating the floor areas of your home with an appropriate insecticide will quickly progress your eradication programme. Ensure that this is a long acting agent as it needs to cover the varying life cycles of eggs to larvae to flea.

Cat Flea Tip

Give your cat oral medication and turn up the heat and humidity in your home. This will encourage any flea eggs to hatch quickly and attch to your cat for a feed.

This feed will render them unable to breed. So there will quickly be no viable eggs left in your home.