A few months ago, I got a kitten at a rummage sale. She was free and a Calico. I love Calico cats so I couldn’t resist. When we got her, she was flea-free. We plan to keep her that way.
We had a real problem with fleas when we had cats inside a few years ago. It was so hard to get rid of the fleas that this time we are determined to do everything we can to prevent a flea infestation. We have tried several flea treatments with our cats but this year we will be using Frontline Plus. However last year the flea problem was so intense where we lived that even Frontline wasn’t a good defense. Hopefully this year won’t be as severe. I’m not sure if the cold winter will deter the fleas but here’s hoping it will.
Besides protecting the cats, we will be treating our lawn. I’ve read that the mineral lime is good for killing fleas. I will have to research it more to see how safe it is for pets and children.
Fleas are constantly a problem for us, and now that we have a cat in the house we will have to be diligent with our efforts to keep them at bay. I may not like cold weather but there is less annoyances to deal with in the winter. But with a little planning, hopefully fleas won’t be a problem for us this year.
Lynn,
I have heard that the Advantage flea treatment is also very good. As far as safe things to use to kill fleas I had a really bad infestation a few months ago and chose to treat my carpets with Dichotomous Earth (available at garden centers). I spread it around on the carpet and brushed it in then waited a few days and vacuumed it out. It is messy and the dust will be a pain to clean up for a while, but the good thing about DE is that it is non-chemical. It is a very fine powder with sharp edges and it kills fleas by wearing off their waxy coating and causing them to dehydrate. The only safety precaution for its use is that you don’t want to breath much of it in as it can be bad for your lungs, but you really only have to worry about this while deploying it. Many gardeners will sprinkle it in their gardens because it works on many other insects as well and has no harmful chemical properties. It is also fairly cheap about $10 for a bag and it only took about half a bag to treat my apartment (and I put down way more than I probably had to).
Just a suggestion but you could probably use this to treat your yard to keep the flea population to a minimum.
Thanks for the info Stimpy. Lynn and I used table salt to get the fleas out of the carpet. It too is messy, but cheap. It also could have caused some damage to the carpet but we didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
Salting the earth outside of the house though … well while it MIGHT work, I doubt we’d want to deal with the side effects.