July 18, 2003
Friday - 5:30 pm

Cosmo's got fleas. He's keeping you up at nights, scratching at his rear end. You've checked, and sure enough, he's got flea dirt, that stuff that looks like dirt, til you wet it and streak it out on a paper towel, and Voila! it streaks out red. That's blood. Cosmo's blood.

And now you know that if Cosmo's got fleas, your whole house has fleas. It's full of all the life phases of the flea, the eggs dropping out of Cosmo's fur as we speak, that wait til a good time to hatch into larvae, so they can burrow more deeply into the soft places in your house. Which then become pupae that then hatch into the little fella that started all of this mess, the flea. Who hops on board Cosmo to take his blood meal and do it all over again.
And it is making your skin crawl just thinking about it.

So what do you do about it?

Well, first you treat Cosmo. And let me tell you, this has become worlds easier since I've gotten out of vet school. And new products crop up every day, so I'm almost certainly behind the times as you read this. Unless Cosmo is just dripping in flea dirt, with the little critters visibly crawling all over him, the easiest way to treat him is with one of the products that you apply to the back of his neck.

The reason you apply it there is because it's the only place on his body that Cosmo can't lick. And you don't want him to lick it off because a) it's not good for him to eat, and you'd have to get him to a vet if he got too much of it, and b) the more he laps up, the less there is to kill fleas. Most of the products I've seen, require at least twenty-four hours to spread from the area where you apply it, to the rest of his body, creating a microfilm on his skin that you are totally unaware of, and that, in some cases, actually crawls down into the hair follicle, so it can survive bathing. Some. Bathing, that is.
Not every day bathing, but the really good ones should maintain after a bath or two.

So you apply this stuff to the back of Cosmo's neck, very carefully. You're making sure as much of the stuff gets into a cleared area on the skin. Cleared of hair, that is. You're trying to get as much of this as close to his skin as you can, so it doesn't end up spreading up his hairs.

If that happens, it's not the end of the world. Most of this stuff is washable with a soapy wash cloth in 24 hours, but you may have to reapply it sooner if he starts scratching earlier.
And avoid nuzzling his neck for a day or two.

There are a few different kinds out there, so I'll go through the ones I know next week.

 
franimaldoc@sitnews.org

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