Me and my boyfriend have a flea problem which we think started in summer. We just assumed it was the usual summer insects since we’re both prone to being bitten perhaps because we are pale, and so we waited it out.
We are trying to treat the house, the problem is that we live in rented accommodation and our house is small.
We cannot deflea the garden because they are shared gardens, we have nowhere to move our furniture to, the carpets don’t belong to us so we have to be careful with them.
To complicate matters further there is a cat involved which also doesn’t belong to us!
He doesn’t appear to have problems with fleas but we don’t know if he’s being treated for fleas or not. We know he belongs to someone because he used to have a tatty collar which was then replaced with a new one and even though he now has no collar he still looks well fed (we don’t feed him)
So we either make sure he can’t come in anymore (which is difficult if we need to air the house because he comes through our downstairs window), or we treat the house with flea treatments which don’t risk harm to the cat (I’ve heard flea bombs are risky) and try to find some way of defleaing him which won’t harm him if he’s already being given maximum flea protection (I’ve heard too much flea treatment on a cat is harmful)
So I need to know all the cat friendly treatments for the house. Can flea traps be used to get the fleas under furniture that can’t be moved? Is there any flea treatment for cat’s which isn’t harmful if used too often or with other flea treatments? And how on earth do we treat the house quickly enough?
If you take some time to read through our FLEA CONTROL ARTICLE, you’ll learn there are some basic things about fleas which will make the process of solving this problem a lot easier than what you anticipate. Based on your questions above, there are a lot of things about fleas you appear to misunderstand and no doubt our article will help you see a lot of what you’re worried about is unfounded. This in turn will give you the confidence needed to treat the house and do so with the proper expectations, time line and mind set.
First and foremost, it sounds like the cat is clearly responsible for the fleas getting active in the home. But as you’ll learn in our article, there are many reasons why a flea problem can start in any house. In fact, about half our customers are people who don’t own a pet so your situation is far from “odd”. Other things you’ll learn will be that fleas don’t migrate off pets; it’s the eggs that fall from an egg laying female which will cause all the trouble whether this female is on a local animal or person. And all it takes is one of these in the home and she can lay hundreds of eggs leading to a massive problem. And if you’ve seen more than one or two fleas, there could be very well have been thousands of eggs distributed around the home so the potential is very real any where an egg laying flea is able to access.
You’ll also learn in our article there is no need to treat the outside since you don’t have pets using the yard on a daily basis. Additionally, there is no reason to worry whether or not the cat has been treated and we most definitely have a flea treatment that will be very safe to you, the cat and the local environment. But amidst all this “good news”, there is one thing you’ll learn which I’m sure you won’t appreciate. There is no way to solve the problem quickly. As explained in our article, the third stage of the flea – known as the pupae – takes awhile to fully develop. More importantly, it won’t hatch out till it has a target on which to land. And since it can stay dormant for several months, it’s quite possible the flea problem will last that long. In other words, since you can’t kill the pupae, you’ll only be flea free when all of the pupae in your home hatch out and just how long this will take is anyone’s guess. So where do you start?
At this time I strongly recommend getting some FLEA TRAPS installed. These will no doubt help. They’ll get flea pupae to hatch, they’ll trap out quite a bit of fleas which then won’t be able to bite and they’ll serve as a great monitoring device to let you know where the bulk of the problem exists. In the end, Flea Traps are a great tool to employ.
You should also apply some of our ONCE A YEAR FLEA GRANULES to all the carpeting in the home. This product is so mild it won’t even kill adult fleas but it will take care of the larvae which is critical when solving flea problems. And there is no reason to use HOUSE FOGGERS. They’ll disperse chemical all over and most of what they treat aren’t important when it comes to flea control. Additionally, they won’t kill the flea pupae so withing a day of using them active fleas will be seen and felt as explained in this post:
www.flea.net/fogger-bombs/foggers-for-fleas-not-working.html
This is why we don’t recommend using them and if you stick to the Flea Granules and Flea Traps, we’re sure you’ll achieve success. More importantly, you’ll be doing this in a simple, long lasting method that’s easy to do, does not involve any complicated “set up” and won’t displace anyone in the home during the process.
Here are direct links to the information and products listed above:
Flea Control Article: www.flea.net/flea-control
Flea Traps: www.bugspray.com/catalog/products/page22.html
Once a Year Flea Carpet Treatment: www.bugspray.com/catalog/products/page23.html
House Foggers: www.bugspray.com/item/indoor_insect_fogger.html
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