Summertime and the Fleas Are Back

by Mewsette

It's Summer. We better talk about fleas. Ick.

No, I'm not gonna show a picture of one. We all know what they are. I doubt if there's a cat alive who never had a flea, unless she lives at the North Pole. We know that fleas cause horrible itching and scratching, dermatitis, allergies, tapeworms, illness - sometimes serious illness. And I'm sure our only interest in these horrid little creatures is keeping them off our feline bodies and out of our cushie lives. Depending on where you live, that used to be easier said than done.

It seems fleas are worst in the summer, but I can testify that they are around all year long in some parts of the U.S. - the hot, damp parts where summer lasts much longer than you want it to, and the ground never freezes hard enough to kill them off. I remember once when my brofur had a sudden bad flea infestation. It was January. In East Texas. That same year, I nearly died after having a flea product applied to me that said it was "safe for kittens". I was no kitten, I was 3 years old. And when my mom wrote a ferocious letter to the company that made it, they didn't care that they had almost killed me. There are many records of the same thing happening to other cats, from several products. But things are better now.

I must say, because it's true, that the easiest method of flea-control ever devised is for a cat to stay in the house! Pure and simple. They aren't in your house unless you bring them in. But it's possible for even your human to bring one in clinging to her sock. It's possible that you live with a dog. Dogs have to go outside; they don't have litter boxes. Then they come back in. With company. So it's not fool-proof. But things are better.

When I was young, all attempts to battle fleas on us cats were risky, could make us sick or even kill us. We went outside in those days, in Texas, and we all had to wear flea collars, horrendous rings of poison hung around our necks that we were inhaling the fumes from every minute. We had to go to the vet for flea-baths, the hard-won effects of which lasted five minutes once we got home and went outside. Every year the whole house had to be flea-bombed. We had carbaryl, a toxic pesticide, dusted into our coats. The one that nearly killed me was a foamy mousse. It was a miracle any of us lived as long as we did. But the poisoning stopped. Things got better.

My little sisfur was handled differently when she came along. She never went outside, never wore a collar, and my mom was finding out how dangerous all the flea products were. A spray that started with the letter Z had been used on her and her littermates before she came to live with us. Her breeder told my mom to use it, but that spray had killed Phelicity's sisfur, so mom never did. The nightly hours of flea-combing started, not just for her, but any of us who wandered by. Phelicity was in the sink getting bathed in flea shampoo every time she turned around. Boy, did she want things to get better! And they did.

Why do I keep saying that? The fleas are still around, nasty as ever, including where I live. But we never see one any more. The dangerous products are still around, too. What got better? What happened to improve our lives and safety and deal a death blow to all the fleas instead of some of the cats? Advantage and Frontline happened, an advance that brought a safe method of flea control to us. This method is called topicals. Oh, thank you!

I don't know if all topicals are as safe or effective as Advantage or Frontline, which we get from our vet. There are always copycats out there, always inferior products rushed to market to cash in on something new, so you can bet there are plenty of them around. Take your vet's advice, not the discount store's. A topical works with one application of the liquid to the skin on the back of our necks, the one place we can't possibly lick it off. They have different active ingredients, Imidacloprid in Advantage and Fipronil in Frontline, which do the same thing, affect the nervous system of the flea. Fatally. They "eliminate" fleas, as in bye-bye forever.

The effects of the application are to last a month or more, but if you live indoors and don't have a dog, it's possible for it to last all year. I'm not saying it will, but in my own purrsonal experience, it did. My sisfur's is even better. She got one flea four years ago; it must have jumped in the back door and headed straight for her. Our mom found it on her and had a fit!! One application of Advantage, and not another flea since. Four years is a pretty good record!

So kitties, it's time to run, not walk, away from toxic pesticides, chemical sprays, dangerous dips, and poison collars, in case you are still exposed to those things. No cat should be any more. We should be flea-free in a much safer way now. It was high time we got that frontline advantage.