Paris Hilton's fleas
Princess continues to be twitchy, so while the food trial has another 5 weeks to run I decided to move on to the next step in the program and treat for fleas.
I've never seen a flea on any of the cats, nor have I seen anything I'd recognise as flea dirt, and believe me I've looked. It's not that I'm unexperienced in the ways of flea detection, having been through that with the family cat, one or two dogs (and a night on a thoroughly flea-infested couch from which I emerged looking like a smallpox victim), and many hours of animal-welfare-themed television.
No vet has seen a flea, or direct evidence of a flea for more than a decade. I stopped regular flea treatment for the cats as something of an experiment many years ago and never really felt the urge to start it up again.
I'm really resistant to the idea of fleas. Frankly, it's embarrassing. Could I have brought them home from the stables this year? If Freo were still a working prison Husband would be a more likely carrier. It's not as if this is new behaviour for Princess, but a gradual escalation. Have we all had fleas all along and she's just recently developed an allergy? It doesn't fit the data.
One of the reasons I stopped treatment is that IT COSTS $50 A MONTH. Not each, but whoa. Fortunately my vet has a "buy 12 get 3 free" offer, which in my case means buy 4 months supply and get one month's supply for free. So that's all right then. Pets. So much cheaper than children.
So the cats are done and each now sports a damp patch more or less on the back of their necks. My aim was a bit off given the small issue of moving goalposts in a squirmy cat. What looks like the back of their neck one moment may not actually be the back of their neck. Still, all the doses were delivered out of tongue range and that's the important thing.
I couldn't bring myself to buy flea bombs, on the working assumption that they would do just as good a job of killing me as any other creepy crawly, but I did get some spray should I feel it necessary to extend the slaughter to the soft furnishings. Pity I didn't see the fine print on the inside of the cat flea product, which claims to kill fleas in the environment as well as on the cats themselves. Now Princess has rejoined me at her usual post on the couch I'm prepared to believe that she is most definitely a walking (ok sleeping) killing machine for any DNA-based organism within a 5 kilometre blast zone. Poor cats, it must be very unpleasant for them :-(
And while I've reported a fair amount of itchiness with regard to my own person, I'm pretty comfortable with the links I've established with salicylate sensitivity and general neuronal wackiness. I've been through the am-I-just-infested-with-something-icky? troubleshooting process, and while denial runs strong in this one I think I've ruled it out as a major cause. The suspicion never really goes away.
I've never seen a flea on any of the cats, nor have I seen anything I'd recognise as flea dirt, and believe me I've looked. It's not that I'm unexperienced in the ways of flea detection, having been through that with the family cat, one or two dogs (and a night on a thoroughly flea-infested couch from which I emerged looking like a smallpox victim), and many hours of animal-welfare-themed television.
No vet has seen a flea, or direct evidence of a flea for more than a decade. I stopped regular flea treatment for the cats as something of an experiment many years ago and never really felt the urge to start it up again.
I'm really resistant to the idea of fleas. Frankly, it's embarrassing. Could I have brought them home from the stables this year? If Freo were still a working prison Husband would be a more likely carrier. It's not as if this is new behaviour for Princess, but a gradual escalation. Have we all had fleas all along and she's just recently developed an allergy? It doesn't fit the data.
One of the reasons I stopped treatment is that IT COSTS $50 A MONTH. Not each, but whoa. Fortunately my vet has a "buy 12 get 3 free" offer, which in my case means buy 4 months supply and get one month's supply for free. So that's all right then. Pets. So much cheaper than children.
So the cats are done and each now sports a damp patch more or less on the back of their necks. My aim was a bit off given the small issue of moving goalposts in a squirmy cat. What looks like the back of their neck one moment may not actually be the back of their neck. Still, all the doses were delivered out of tongue range and that's the important thing.
I couldn't bring myself to buy flea bombs, on the working assumption that they would do just as good a job of killing me as any other creepy crawly, but I did get some spray should I feel it necessary to extend the slaughter to the soft furnishings. Pity I didn't see the fine print on the inside of the cat flea product, which claims to kill fleas in the environment as well as on the cats themselves. Now Princess has rejoined me at her usual post on the couch I'm prepared to believe that she is most definitely a walking (ok sleeping) killing machine for any DNA-based organism within a 5 kilometre blast zone. Poor cats, it must be very unpleasant for them :-(
And while I've reported a fair amount of itchiness with regard to my own person, I'm pretty comfortable with the links I've established with salicylate sensitivity and general neuronal wackiness. I've been through the am-I-just-infested-with-something-icky? troubleshooting process, and while denial runs strong in this one I think I've ruled it out as a major cause. The suspicion never really goes away.