My Cat Has Fleas

Please don't think I'm a horrible pet owner. But I noticed a few weeks ago that my cat was grooming herself...a lot. But how did I know this was indicative of a problem? Cats groom themselves a lot anyway.

But on a routine vet visit the Vet suggested she might have fleas and prescribed an expensive once a month shot on the back of the neck flea remedy. It has a fancy confidence building one word name like Advantage or Revolution or Jihad. Anyway it proclaims to kill fleas, flea eggs, and flea larvae for 30 days, infact it will kill anything or anyone with the letters FLEA in their name.


Since I had taken a magnifying glass and actually looked at a flea, and realized that once magnified you find that these creatures are akin to microscopic versions of ALIENS....I immediately looked for a tiny Sigourney Weaver, I was happy to turn in a Krugerand for the 90 day supply of super powerful flea medication.

Imagine my disappointment when after application all the addition of the chemical seemed to do was make the tiny Aliens angry. My cat now frantically groomed as if they were launching all out invasion. And I, who had never actually witnessed a flea in my environment now found them attacking me.

Now this is what I find strange. When you mention to a Vet, or "Cat Person" or Vets Assistant that your cat has fleas? You initially get the "Easy Problem To Solve" reaction. But upon further digging? This will inevitably morph. The "just apply this" turns into....

(Embellished only slightly)

#1. Fleas can live up to 90 days without a food source.
#2. One single surviving flea can instantaneously create 100,000.000.0000 billion hatching offspring, and often these eggs will be planted in your sleep- In your ear canal.
#3. A flea is capable of jumping from your carpet, cat, or other unnerving intimate area, to a low earth orbit. They can then remain in low earth orbit for weeks before re-entering earth atmosphere to return to your cat and/or lay eggs in your ear canal.
#4. The makers of Advantage, Revolution or Jihad...only guarantee success if the environment of the feline is simultaneously eradicated of the presence of fleas, ticks, gnomes and fairys. Because if even one is left alive....well you know....

So anyway, with this failure I return to the Vet to admit that the flea remedy doesn't seem to be working.

Well the Vet Tech smiles...."you probably need to treat your entire living environment, which can be done with a can of Super Flea Ease indoor chemical fog. Spray it on carpet, couches, drapes, anywhere the cat has ever been, or has every wanted to be, including France. "

About $30 for the Extra Strength.

I then also get a wary eyed warning about keeping the home clean. Not directly insulting me, but suggesting that perhaps my home cleaning standards were part of the problem. I must vacuum everything...and then light the vacuum cleaner on fire.

So this weekend has been hallmarked by excessive expense. A literally bloody attempt to bath the cat, which resulted in the cat, even though I am working in her best interest, and have spent a car's down payment on her, glaring at me all weekend like I had attempted to kill her. She now sits in the corner glaring like she knows that the kitchen sink bathing was just a warm up for a burlap sack, a rock and the river.

I know she can't understand, but with all I have tried to do? A thanks for trying- would be so much nicer than the now distrustful glances she is shooting me. I was just trying to get the fleas off her...not kill her.

Yeah, the cat seems at better peace. I haven't witnessed a flea...yet. Maybe I've won this first battle. But I imagine the war isn't over.

Something from grade school studies of the Black Plague remind me that it wasn't the rats that carried the plague, it was the fleas on the rats. But I push this thought to the back of my mind as I scratch my calf.

My cat has fleas...which mean I have fleas, and fleas? Ain't Easy.