Green Cat Flea Bait? (#2 of 3)

Bugs are wet and sweaty Texas’ state birds. By bugs I count butterflies and dragon flies in fairness, but what I really mean are cockroaches, venomous things, mosquitoes and the pissy little insect in question: fleas. When summer hit Houston sometime that February after I first found percy, and he started losing his hair, and I kept getting minuscule “mosquito” bites, I never imagined “fleas” were the culprits. As a native of alpine, cold, and dry Utah, I really thought fleas only existed in nineteenth century novels.

As I’ve noted, Percy suffered immensely from my ignorance.

Percy’s pomades of choice from that day forward have been Advantage and/or Frontline flea killers. Some vet, many years ago, promised me that the active ingredient in these killers is a salt, and that the salt isn’t bad for my cat or me or my baby, and I was content to believe it because it worked. But then GreenDaddy just read that book about raising your children toxic free, and made me look up the ingredients in both flea killers -- Imadacloprid in one, Aryleterocycles in the other -- and I found that they were, indeed bad toxins. I also realized that over 90% of most of the rest of the ingredents aren't listed, and I know because I am a smart cookie who has read up on this sort of thing, that the inactive, unlisted ingredients are often much more toxic than the active ones.

I want to be a green parent. Fleas make the cat very sick. The two things that work to kill the fleas in Texas are toxic. Sigh.

Everybody on the internet knows all this. I found two particularly thorough articles from the Animal Protection of New Mexico website, one on why spot-on flea killers are not safe, the other on how to get rid of fleas naturally. I’ve also read a number of articles citing very sick pets, and sometimes sick humans, resulting from the flea killers.

So I read lots of articles about natural remedies. When I read stories of people who tried them, I don’t get lots of assurance they’re going to work. And the problem I have with them is that some “natural” ingredients aren’t safe for dogs and cats.

Two important examples of natural ingredients you SHOULD NOT USE: GARLIC causes liver failure in cats and dogs if they eat it regularly; thus, they die by spitting up blood when overexposed. ESSENCIAL OIL EXTRACTS: have killed many cats.

Even my diehard “natural” friends, in Texas, laugh at me when I tell them I need to stop using Frontline and Advantage. Percy has never had monthly doses of either…he’s like Izzy Mom and deodorant: he uses it about a third as often as the box says he should, and that works fine.

I am going to try to use other methods. In my next post I'll offer a number of recipes, treatments, etc. Still, I can’t help feeling skeptical. I admit this ahead of time. Deep inside my imperfect green brain I suspect that the only really effective treatments for fleas, outside of Advantage and Frontline, is moving to a northern clime.