Fleas in the house Any natural suggestions?

penrhyn

You need to have your cats injected with Program, it sterilises the fleas and acts to break the reproductive cycle.
Then contact your council and get them round to spray the property.

http://www.isabellevets.co.uk/health_advice/cat/info/programcat.htm

Its no time to be messing about with natural remedies that won't work.

I usually have a can of Staykill around just in case.
http://www.petmeds.co.uk/Products/Flea-and-Tick/Staykill-Household-Flea-Spray

skyepark

i got rid of them quite quickly i sprinkled my bed with salt and bought a spray and sprayed under my bed the bad frame adn the skirting boards of the house, i also hot washed my sheets and hoovered duvet , pilow and mattress.

i tried the bowl of water and lamp shining in it but didn't see any in the water it may have worked.i don't even have a pet! get rid of the fleas form your cat first then treat the house they are annoying arent they! and make you look horrid

spaghetti_monster

I had trouble with fleas a while back and although I did use the sprays, I also did a lot of vacuuming. I had just re-homed my cat so I put a leftover frontline capsule in the hoover bag. Then the second I finished hoovering I taped over the opening and air vents of the hoover to keep the little !!!!!!s inside...... and it seemed to work.
Good luck!

socks_uk

We get fleas every year and the only thing I can think of is to get NO MORE CATS!

I pay £15.49 for 6 pipettes of Frontline from VetUK.co.uk, so that's 2 months treatment for 3 cats. I usually get the 'Flea Man' in when I can't stand the bites anymore. NEVER buy Frontline your local vets.

KiKi

I'd just add what other people have said here - the best remedy is the vet-approved sprays for your house.

It's actually got very little to do with 'can you vacuum them up' or 'it's not working' - it can take weeks for the cycle of reproduction to be broken. So you may have sprayed, but the horrors are still hatching out of eggs and not being affected. So you should persist with respraying - VERY thoroughly and hoover *before* you spray, but as others have said, not for a week or so afterwards.

I had this problem recently. I stopped using Frontline because it's just not strong enough, and I'm now using Advocate which is much much better. My cats were very unhappy, and I was being bitten constantly. I hoovered, sprayed, left it for a week, hoovered and sprayed again. Only a week or so later did I start to see a difference.

(re steam cleaning - I tried that, I wouldn't bother. Heat and water just don't kill fleas effectively. You might kill a few, but the way to stop them is prevent the reproductive cycle from happening again - steam cleaning won't do that. Certainly won't kill the eggs which have yet to hatch.)

The muggy weather we've been having really hasn't helped.

Hope you get it cleared!

TGM

The most natural way I can think of is move house

Ken68

A natural predator would be a spider or beetle.
As I type am also watching a half inch sized beetle scuttle around this carpet. No fleas here that I know about. Perhaps he's looking for a way out of the house, but will let him hoover up overnight first.

lovelyjubbly

one thing I was told when I had a cat was to get a cheap flea collar and cut it into about 2 inch bits, then each time you change the hoover bag pop a piece in through the end or the hole of the bag, and when you hoover, the fleas or flea eggs you hoover up will DIE :T in the bag, then you haven't got to keep emptying/changing it........it worked for us anyway.

Also for you husband, I take a homeopathy remedy called ledum, it is for bites, it makes the human less tasty to the insect/flea, it works really well, I take it for holidays abroad/ and Scotland ,I didn't get bitten by mozzies in Spain or midgies in Scotland this year,(which is a miracle as thy just love me, and fleas do if I go into somones house who has pets/fleas) whilst my husband who never gets bitten was covered in midgie bites in Scotland.
hope this helps

mandarinduck

Somebody once told me that the best thing to do was put in a pair of tights and stand in the room. Once all the fleas are on the tights get out the hoover and hoover them up. Ug.

Needless to say, I didn't try it and used some of the more conventional methods as shown above!

Now we have a cat who is completely disinterested in spending more than 90 seconds a day outside (hurray!). No fleas, no mites and no worries about her being out all night. She's a gem (even if she does spend 23 and a half hours a day asleep!).

soon2bjobless

Try putting a big tray of water on the floor - put a lighted candle in it (a tea light is ideal) and leave in the room overnight - the fleas are attracted to the light and land in the water and drown - must be very careful the tray is big enough so if the candle gets tipped up it doesnt burn!!