Fleas, need advice!! (kind of long)?

Question

Between my room mate, my boyfriend, and myself our home seems to have been taken over by fleas! We have two indoor cats and one small dog.

I know what advice I will get first hand- and thats get frontline or advantage. I know...my animals have been covered every month since we have gotten them!..so I have been taking the right precautions.

We didn't realize we had the tiny bloodsuckers as bad as we do until today though. For ten hours straight my room mate and I changed all linens and did ALOT of laundry. We used borax for the furniture and we mixed salt and bleach in a spray bottle and sprayed EVERY single baseboard in our apartment! We mopped with bleach and we vacuumed the entire place numerous times, including the furniture!

The problem is...we continued to find fleas on the animals. They received their advantage two days ago- why isn't it working? Plus, they have been covered monthly!!

Could our apartment be infested or what are we doing wrong?!? Pleeeeassseee help- this is very gross and I feel like a bad owner :(

Please give as much detail as possible and the more answers the better. Thank you to all in advance!

Answer 1

my family rented a house where we lived with 6 cats at one point in time.  One summer we got terrible fleas that layed eggs in our carpet and it was terribly infested with millions of fleas!!!  the ONLY thing that worked was a flea bomb.  make sure you set one off in each room of the house (we didn't do the kitchen or bathroom though) and came back after the recommended time to vacuum and clean up.  After that we had no more fleas because the cats had advantage :)  go to a hardware store or wal-mart to buy them in packages of multiples to save money.  overall it shouldn't cost more than $20.  good luck!

Answer 2

it sounds like u are doing the right things. It may take a couple weeks, but  continue to vacuum daily(floors should be good enough). the frontline/advantage will take care of the rest. If your vacuum is bagless, make sure u empty the container outside of your dwelling.

Answer 3

You've done everything right.  The vacuuming should have helped tremendously. I'd also throw that 20 mule team borax all over the floors and leave it down awhile.  When you vacuum that up, don't do a real through job.  Leave it in the corners near the baseboards.

About the Advantage, did you follow the directions and apply it correctly?  It needs to be on the skin not the animals hair and in places they can't reach with their tongue that easily (back of neck and down backbone toward the rear).  It probably is working, just taking a while because eggs hatched somewhere they frequent.

If your pets go outdoors, you need to treat the areas outside where they frequent.  There are sprays for that.  If the weather continues to be  warm and dry outside and you don't have to worry about a sprinkler system messing things up, you could just liberally sprinkle another box of borax on the lawn or dirt.

Good luck!

Answer 4

I know how you feel we are going though the same thing we have sprayed, bombed, bathed, and on and on and it doesn't seem any better some one told me to try washing the animals with Joy dish soap and put small dishes of this under night lights at night we are trying this now hope it works!!!!!!

Answer 5

my cat had fleas for at least a year, i would bath him with flea shampoo at least once a week, and actually sit there and pick his fleas off with tweezers!  I also used flea powder all over the house.

  Honestly they finally went away when we moved!!!    At the same time though, we had started the frontline advantage stuff, and i think it did actually work...  It really does take like a month though for it to get into their system and start working.  Also though, if i was you i would get some flea bombs for the house, and pick a day to bomb the house, and at the same time take your animals to get "dipped" at the vet, and also purchase some of the frontline, and a few days after you come home you could put the frontline on him.  It sounds pretty elaborate, but i know first had that fleas are almost invincible.  If i had to go back to that situation, i would do what i just described to you.  I think i got lucky in my situation because i had just started using the frontline, and i moved, so my cat was out of the flea infested environment..!! Good luck... stick with it.     And also, after you put the frontline on dont bath the animal, let it work into him for a month..