Fleas....Help!

This has come up a lot lately. Our basement was becoming a flea haven. Our cat brought them in because the kids would let her hide in the bushes. We lost her about a month ago, because of these stupid fleas. I used Hartz spray in a trigger bottle and have not noticed any fleas in the past week. I sprayed every other day and we vacuumed every day. However, someone recommended and I saw after searching that it does work, penny royal. However, what I found is that it is related to miscarriage in cats so if you are pregnant or planning to do not use it. You can buy it in a powder form. Put it all over the house and leave for the day with your pets, all day. Then you vacuum it up. I also saw that Borax and salt, 3 pounds borax and a pound of salt I think, will dry out the fleas but you have to reapply for a while since it cannot break into the eggs.

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Your mileage may vary but we used diotomatious earth where DD would not go and let it sit for several days before vacuuming it up. You want food grade, you want to apply it carefully and wear a filter mask to put it down and clean it up. Once it is down, it's fine. Then you also treat all the pets (with something like frontline or advantage), wash everything, and vacuum at least every 21 days (we do more often) and toss the trash bag when you vacuum. I personally do not like Hartz products. I find them to be too harsh and flea collars can be very problematic for pets.

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If you are just trying to get fleas outta the house you can vacuum everyday, I mean everyday for about 2 or 3 weeks. Take every pillow etc. and bag them in plastic bags until anything that was in there is dead. Then wash them. Wash any and all linens in hot water. The vacuuming will work if there are no new fleas being introduced into your house. But you have to be diligent - no chemicals necessary.

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You have to treat the animal, Revolution is one of the best choices out there, you get that from a vet. Flea collars on animals are harmful, as are things like Hartz and other store brands, plus they rarely work. Use only flea preventative from a veterinarian. There are some more natural remedies for treating the house yard instead of bombing, Some work, some don't.. so research around.

Vacuum constantly, and change the bag. Buy a flea collar, cut it up and put it in the vacuum bag. You also have to treat your yard. If you have a shaggy type carpet, put it in the trash. The flea eggs will lie dormant in there and no amount of vaccuuming or bombing/spray will be able to get them. You have to treat in cycles, because fleas live in cycles. You may be killing off all the adult fleas, but then larval and eggs are just fine and dandy.

Also, the pet cannot be in the home when it is being bombed. We went away for a weekend, bombed the house and treated the dog at the same time.

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Fleabusters has a borate-based powder that you sprinkle all over that will break the cycle. It takes about 3 weeks to a month, but it really really works! We had a BAD flea infestation and Frontline + bombing just wasn't working, but Fleabusters did. Fleasbusters.com

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Forget the bombing and the sprays - treat the pets, and all the pets, with Frontline or Revolution every month (available for dogs and cats). You need to get it from your veterinarian. Do not buy any over-the-counter spot-on type products (such as at Walmart, etc.) because they are not the same thing and can be highly toxic. Do not use anything labeled for a dog on a cat. If your house is so bad that treating the pets alone is not enough, call an exterminator. You can try some spray in small amounts along the baseboards where there is carpeting, vacuuming with a flea collar in the bag (flea collars don't work well on pets either), and throwing out any pet bedding or anything else that you can easily get rid of. But exterminators treat the whole house and should re-treat at no cost if necessary. Treating the yard too should help.

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You might also want to treat your yard as well.

We used the frontline stuff for our two cats and they became like death to all fleas in the house. The fleas on the cats would die, the fleas living wherever the cats would sleep would die. The house became flea free after the first month of application. Once the house was free of infestation for a solid three months we stopped applying the meds and have been flea free for a solid year now.

Our cats are indoor only and we don't have any other pets running in and out to reinfect them. The reason they had fleas in the first place was because we adopted a stray and he infected the whole house. Once we got him fixed up at the vet and treated him for fleas he never had a re-infestation.

Put frontline on the animals.
Get flea powder for your carpet.....you shake it on, leave it for awhile, then vacuum it up. I wouldn't let young kids on the carpet though. Read all the warnings etc.

If you treat your pets (with Revolution or Frontline or some other vet-recommended solution) you will not have fleas in a short while, because there will be nothing for them to feed on. Animals treated with these things actually REPEL fleas. Do that first, and see if it works for you. We've used it on all our pets for years and we have never had one flea. Our pets are fine too.

I would never bomb a house by myself. Too much room for error with chemicals. If you end up needing something like that (which I promise you won't if you treat your pets) then hire a professional.

We have indoor only cats but occasionally fleas find their way in anyway.
We use Revolution which is available from our vet with a prescription. It kills not only the adults but prevents the eggs from hatching. It has worked the best of anything we've ever used. We have never had to use it longer than 3 months to get rid of fleas completely and we do nothing else in the house except sometimes vacuum a bit more and throw in a cut up flea collar in the bag and throw out the bag right away. We have our house outside sprayed once a month by Dewey Pest control to keep down the bugs outside.
If your pets are indoor/outdoor you have to use the flea treatment religiously once a month because they will just keep picking them up and bringing them in. The Revolution will keep it to a bare minimum though.
I was told you can sprinkle borax or salt on the carpet, let it sit then vacuum it up. It dehydrated the fleas and eggs and then sort of cuts them all up.
You have to treat the pets first and consistantly.
Those store brand stuff and Hartz are poisonus to your pets. There are many warnings to not use them. I wish they weren't still on the market. You need to get safe, quality stuff.

We use Frontline on our cat currently, which does a great job of keeping them under control.
But before that, when the fleas were out of control, I used this spray that helped: Vet's Best Natural Flea Tick Home Spray. We got it on-line. Natural, no chemicals.
Along with the spray, when we were really desperate, we used a product called Spring Star Electric Flea trap. Put it in the worst areas of your home and it will catch fleas (especially overnight). You can get it on amazon, I believe.
Lots of vacuuming and emptying your vacuum bag regularly!
Good luck!

As I sit here itching the ____@____.com out of my belly from my flea bites. I say BOMB the place. I got bit at work. Normally I wouldn't think anything of it and ward it off as sketer bites, but I saw the flea the other day. :( They had to spray my office. Thing is I don't have animals and there aren't any here at work so I am not sure how they got into my office.

scratch, scratch!

We also recently had this issue and used fleabusters. Worked wonders!! We treated all the animals and we were also advised to vacuum everyday and treat the yard which we did. Now the problem is gone! Good luck!

Pretty sure bombing is the way to go. It always worked growing up when our family dog had them (long before the days of prescription flea meds).

And cool to see someone here from Mountain View! Used to live on Rengstorff.