Best Cat Flea Treatments

When your cat catches fleas, it can be easy to panic a little bit. Not only are the fleas threatening to infest your home, but you know that your pet is suffering from their constant biting. Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of basic knowledge to help you fight off these irritating creatures. Read on to become more educated on how you can help your feline friends.

Fleas are parasitic insects, meaning they live off of other creatures. In the case of fleas, these other creatures can be anything with warm blood. They do not discriminate – where ever they can find a feeding source, they will stay. This can mean pets like dogs, cats, rabbits, etc., or it can even mean humans.

Fleas go through a life cycle that is similar to a lot of insects. The adults lay their eggs, and the eggs develop until the larvae are ready to come out. Once they do, the larvae evolve through various molts before they spin themselves a cocoon. The adults eventually come out of these cocoons.

Most commonly, if the stage is set correctly and conditions are ideal, this process takes about 21 days. However, it doesn’t have to. Fleas are different from other insects in that they can essentially hit the pause button on their life cycle.

If the conditions are not ideal to move to the next stage, they simply won’t; they will wait. This is one of the reasons why people have such a hard time getting rid of fleas. It’s also why it is important for you to get a long-lasting solution rather than short-term.

A female flea can lay as many as 50 eggs every day. While the average is about 20, that is still more than enough for one female to cause a major infestation in a short amount of time.

With excellent mobile skills, fleas are known to be able to jump more than 150 times their body length. This is what allows them to jump onto larger animals like dogs.

Fleas are harmful to animals because their bites are itchy and irritating. However, some pets can also develop an allergy to flea bites. Additionally, fleas can transmit diseases that are harmful to humans because they carry bacteria.

In young kittens, fleas can be extremely dangerous. Large infestations around small kittens can cause the kittens to become very ill. Your kitten could develop an iron deficiency called anemia, and if it gets bad enough, it could even require a blood transfusion.

Fleas actually prefer cats, and getting rid of them on a feline can be different from getting rid of them on a dog. Let’s be honest – which do we think would prefer a bath more: a dog or a cat? The answer is definitely not the cat.

Although you can certainly bathe your cat, you may want to use a different kind of treatment like an ointment or a powder.

Something to look out for when your cat has fleas is tapeworms. Fleas can carry tapeworm eggs, and since cats regularly groom themselves, they are at high risk for ingesting these eggs. You are not only looking for signs of fleas now but tapeworms in your cat.

Cats also tend to be more temperamental than dogs. You could have the world’s sweetest cat as your pet, but the irritating bites and itchiness can bring out a side you have never seen – one that hisses, swats, and defecates in your home.

It is extremely important to ensure that a mother cat is flea-free. A mother cat is not just caring for itself, but for newborn kittens.

Newborn kittens cannot be treated with topical flea treatments. Since they are so young and small, it is likely that a flea infestation will quickly cause anemia. Anemia on such a new and fragile life can become deadly.

What may seem like an irritating problem for some can be a life or death situation to kittens and mothers, so be sure to take extra care in these situations.