Quick HELP! Any veterinarians or flea experts out there?

[kpgclark]

Hi-

We were excited because we adopted a 3 year old cat this weekend. We met the agency woman at the Vets yesterday so the cat could get checked out before we adopted her. The cat came from her old owner's house directly. Turns out she has fleas. Well the agency lady took her home yesterday to her own house and treated her with Frontline which she said would kill the fleas within 18-24 hours. Anyhow we took the cat home today and guess what? I found a flea on her! I'm freaking out because I have a very clean home and really do not want fleas in here. What should I do? Please help!

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

It could be a dying flea.

We like Advantage better...if you see fleas earlier than 1 month...switch. We had a pet that frontline was applied--but it had to be applied every 2 weeks which I thought rediculous. We have had excellent luck with Advantage. So much so that we very rarely use it anymore and we have an indoor/outdoor in our 5-cat family. We have it on hand just in case.

 

[chrissyk]

When we had the 2 rescue kittens this spring, they were infested with fleas. We bathed them for 2 days in a row, picking the fleas out by hand. We just used baby shampoo. After we got all of the visible fleas out, we treated them with Advantage. It worked fine...we never saw another flea after that.

 

[jenm2878]

Whatever you do, DO NOT use Hartz to get rid of fleas!!! I've heard MANY horror stories about it - the stuff should be taken off the market.

 

[LMC]

There is a pill you can give them to kill the fleas very quickly. However, it is not a long term solution so that is where the frontline or revolutions come into play. Check with your vet; make sure you tell them you are already using the other flea preventative too. I'd try the pill we used it once on a cat we found on the road and it seemed to work.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

Ugh, brings back memories of last month! We brought our two kittens home, kept them apart from our cats (thank goodness!) and found fleas on them. They'd been treated with Frontline/Advantage (one kitten Frontline, one Advantage). We combed them at least daily with a flea comb, killing each flea (not easy to kill, but a little de flea spray in a cup). We bathed the cats in baby shampoo and it took a couple weeks for my scratches to heal. I'd read that baby shampoo was as good as flea bath and much safer. I vacuumed their area daily and treated it with the flea spray.

This was right after a DISer lost one of her cats to a flea dip and one of her other cats almost died, so I was super cautious.

We waited (I think) 2 weeks to retreat the kittens with advantage. It was the minimum time a person can wait.

Our vet does not use Frontline at all because of the cancer risk. I also think that I remember hearing that Frontline does not stand behind their product, but I could be mistaken about that.

I do need to treat them again--once a month for 3 months.

Good luck and keep us posted. It was a pain to deal with (we've never had them before), but it will get better if you keep at it. We also treated our adult cats, but have never seen one out of the bathroom where the kittens were living for almost 2 weeks.

 

[kpgclark]

Thanks for all the replies! The volunteer from the animal shelter came to my house and just left. I thought that was very nice of her. She gave her one of those pills-- capscan or something like that and she put just a little more Frontline on her because she thought she may not have given the full dosage yesterday. I really didn't want her to put more Frontline on though but she said it would be OK. I really hope we don't OD the poor cat but there are no vets to call at 9:15pm when you don't yet even have your own vet. Anyhow, all I can do is hope for the best. Keep your fingers crossed that we have no fleas!

 

[Pugdog007]

I've used Frontline for years with no problems. Only have to use it every couple of months for fleas, for ticks you should use once a month. I've never heard that it caused cancer or any other illness.