Cats and Fleas - What Can You Do?

In loving our cats, pets and other animals, there comes along the fact of unwanted fleas, just like with us humans, children are more prone to head lice, but what do we need to do? There are many different ways you can tackle fleas, many of them are using insecticides and poisons. You can find many different products available from many different sources at varying price ranges and like in many instances, you are faced with a tough decision and which one is the best one to buy or which one is the best product for value for money? However, in treating fleas we need to learn about the flea cycle and how they live, reproduce so that we can effectively manage, control and avoid fleas.

So what do we need to know about fleas. The fleas living on your cat or dog, live by sucking blood from your pet which is the fleas' sole food source. The female flea mates with the male and lays eggs amongst the fur of your cat. Fleas also excrete the digested blood meal which looks like little flecks of black pepper amongst your cat's coat. At times, this can be the only evidence you can see as signs that your cat may have fleas. The eggs laid by the female flea then hatch out as tiny translucent larvae.

The larvae feed on the flea feces as well as the cat's skin scales and other debris. The larvae then spin a sticky cocoon and enter what is a called a pupa stage. This stage can last from a few days to a few months. This pupa stage does not live on your pet, they attach to the cat's surroundings such as carpet, bedding, outside in the garden. Then when the conditions are right, the papae hatch out and become a new adult flea. At this point, they need to find an animal, say your cat, to become their host so to speak so that they can live and feed off the cat's blood. If the newly hatched adult fleas do not find a suitable host within three or four days, it will die and this puts a small break in the cycle. However, to stop all the fleas you need to stop all these individual cycles so no more eggs are laid and kill all the adult fleas.

So how do you treat fleas and cut the cycle? You can buy many insecticides which will kill the adult flea and some will kill the larvae. You can also treat the fleas with what is called a growth regulator and this only works on the fleas and not your cat, to dry up the eggs to prevent the eggs hatching and starting the new cycle. At the moment there is no product which can kill the pupae stage of the cycle. Because of this, we cannot carry out one single treatment to kill all the fleas, larvae, eggs and pupae. We need to continually treat our cats and also their environment. If you don't want to use pesticides and products and looking for a more natural method, you can comb your cat with a special flea comb. However, this will remove the majority of the adult fleas but not all, but does not deal with the other stages in the life cycle. If you have more than one cat or a cat and dog, you must ensure that your treat all the animals and not just the ones that you think may infected. This is because it can be hard to tell if they are infested with fleas in the early stages before they actually are and also the cat which is not affected will be more desirable to be a new host for the new pupae stage when they hatch.

To treat the environment, the cat's home, bedding and surroundings, to make as many breaks as you can in the fleas life cycles, you can room foggers or sprays to treat the carpets, bedding, furniture. It is important to ensure that fleas are dealt with regularly and properly so that they are controlled and eliminated from yours and your cat's surroundings.

Good luck.

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