Me Vs. The Flea

More recently than I would like to admit, my family had an encounter with something that I never want to encounter again. We have a very dear, sweet, American long haired cat, named Solitaire. We adopted him from a home in Birmingham one day when we were out garage sale hunting as we often like to do. Since we knew he was going to be an indoor cat we took him promptly to be fixed and declawed as soon as he was old enough. Things had been sailing along smoothly with our little kitty, aside from the nuisance of cat hairs being everywhere which I suppose is common enough, until I came home one afternoon to our nanny, Elisha, who announced that she had seen a flea upstairs in the house. I was working full time and didn’t have much room for any extra information in my brain at the moment, so for that reason, this “flea” didn’t strike immediate alarm in my mind like it should have. And, boy, it should have! I went out and bought a flea collar for our cat from Wal-Mart and thought, “Okay, that should take care of it!”, and proceeded to go about the rest of my week. Each following day, however, Elisha was giving us an updated flea report. Contrary to what I had expected had begun to happen. The number of fleas were increasing!! This caught my attention, but sadly, it was a little too late. We encountered a FULL BLOWN flea infestation!!!! I decided that these fleas were NOT going to be permitted to live in my house, and so I declared all out war. No one told me that you can’t do war with fleas and win which I now must confess I learned from experience. Nonetheless, I set about cleaning, mopping, vacuuming, bombing, and flea powdering the house…the embarrassing part…on a daily basis. I think when it was all said and done and I was waving a white flag and calling the exterminator, I had set off six bombs and gone through several cans of flea powder. Not to mention that I spent far too much time, energy , and money trying to get rid of the various stages and cycles of fleas now residing in our house. The exterminator had to come twice in order to get rid of them! Solitaire wins the award for being our most expensive garage sale find. He was 300 dollars to fix and declaw, 200 dollars to bath and Frontline, and 360 dollars to have his fleas exterminated from the house. If anyone would have told me that I would have had to pay nearly 1,000 dollars for this cat at the garage sale, I would have said “No!”

The saying sure is true: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Now, maybe I can make some of this money back by advertising my story for Frontline?? :-)

HOW TO GET RID OF FLEAS 100% GUARANTEED:
Seal up all personal belongings and lock them inside your home. Douse home with gasoline. Light a match and ignite house. Stay nearby to make sure that the fire department is NOT called and that your house burns to the ground. Sweep up remaining ashes trying to catch as many fleas still hopping around as possible and seal up in an airtight plastic bag. Relocate. It worked for us!

Future article: Top Ten Ways You Know You Are Infested With Fleas