Cat Flea Treatment

The things we do for love!!!!! By the way I didn’t ask for this. Our Cat Naruto is in the Kitchen making a racket right now (time for tea don’t you know)! This is a guest post by Mrs Three Dog Blogger. Sorry to break the Dogs only rules but she is right. A lot of us Dog owners also own stinky, oh so superior Cats that have total disdain for us and hate us and all they want from us is food and treat the place like a hotel and……………………

As part of Pets Medicine Month I have been asked to write a guest post here at The Dog Blog. Lies all lies!

First of all a little introduction. I am writing for the ‘other side’. Nothing about dogs here I’m afraid. This is all about Cat Flea Treatment. I am guessing many of you dog owners are also responsible for cats too so I hope this will be of interest to some of you at least.

Cat fleas are usually the fleas in your home and on your other pets regardless of whether you own a cat. This is because they just aren’t fussy – happy to take a meal wherever they find it. Cats with fleas are miserable and a little annoying (all that scratching can drive them and us to distraction). But more seriously fleas can actually pose health problems for our feline pets.

Why Your Cats Flea Treatment is REALLY Important

The most common side effects are flea bite dermatitis and skin infections. Just as with dogs and fleas, cats often develop allergies to both flea bites and flea ‘dirt’ (that’s poo to you and I). Even if an animal has been fine for years it is quite common to suddenly develop a serious allergy to fleas at any time. Severe cases of flea dermatitis will leave cats with sore, inflamed skin. This leads us on to the second problem.

Cats with lots of itchy flea bites or a case of dermatitis are prone to excessive grooming to alleviate the irritation. This can result in them breaking the skin, producing sores and allowing skin infections and bald patches to develop. Not only does this look nasty it can actually be relatively dangerous and in extreme cases could allow blood poisoning to occur. More usually the results are a very unhappy cat.

Because cats are so good at keeping themselves clean and tidy they often actually swallow a large number of adult fleas whilst grooming. These fleas can themselves contain immature tapeworms. Once the cat has ingested the flea he or she will become host to the tapeworm. Cats suffering from intestinal worms are miserable and loud, always meowing for more food, not good for them or their owners.

More serious is flea anaemia brought on by too many fleas consuming your cat’s blood faster than it can replace it. Usually you can spot the condition as gums will be unusually pale. It is simple to treat but life-threatening if not spotted. The condition can occur in any cat if the flea population is seriously large. But it is more usual in kittens and poorly or old cats unable to keep up with the supply of red blood cells needed to stay fit even with relatively small flea infestations.

A failure to deal with fleas will affect your whole family. With cats more likely to roam far and wide they come into contact with these parasites very regularly and will keep bringing them home to join you and your other pets.

There has been some negative publicity surrounding some of the modern cat flea treatment products available. In fact the newer forms of pest control introduced over the last 20 years are safer than anything used previously. This is because rather than using broad spectrum poisons, the new active ingredients are only capable of affecting insects and some invertebrates. The nervous system of mammals just doesn’t react. However there have been problems primarily due to misuse of dog flea treatments on cats. There are some things which cats are intolerant of, while dogs remain happily ignorant so never use anything other than a Cat Flea Treatment on your cats.

Keeping your cat happy and healthy must always involve keeping him or her free of fleas. Whether you opt for topical flea drops, sprays or oral cat flea medicine keep an eye on your feline friend to ensure the cat flea treatment is doing its job. The more traditional (and usually much cheaper) options are often great in some locales but ineffective in others. This is just part of different flea populations evolving to avoid our control. Luckily the newer treatments stop reproduction and development of eggs so fleas should not grow immune to their use.