Days until Christmas: 18
Days until my birthday: 13
Charlie's 1st birthday
The cats have fleas.
Daisy first saw them and their spoor on Charlie a few nights ago. It's easier to see them on him because he's white, and while his fur is thick, he's not a longhair. Charlie has always been an itchy boy, but we just thought it was allergies. Well, it's not. He has allergies too that make him wheeze and sniffle and be snotty on occasion, but it's not just allergies.
Over the course of the past 48 hours or so, we have pulled them off of all the cats. No, we don't know how they got them. Daisy works at the Humane Society every weekend (and I used to as well), we've had multiple cats in to the vet multiple times over the course of the past few months, we had our Catsitter (who also watches dogs) here every day for a full week both when we were in NC and again while we were in Canada, my parents in NC have dogs who like to roll around outside every day, Daisy's parents have three cats who aren't on flea meds, and we occasionally like to take the cats for walks in the stroller if the weather is nice. We also lapsed on their Frontline after September or so, regrettably.
What I'm saying is there's not a singular source we can pinpoint and say "they came from here." We'd likely never have that anyhow.
Daisy is horrified. I am much calmer about it. Pete, Sadie, and Maggie all had fleas when they were kittens, and they were covered in them, as was my apartment at the time; I put the equivalent of Frontline on them back then, and it was no longer an issue -- the fleas died off quickly and we never saw them again. I figured we have more cats now, but the same principle applies -- get them all back on the Frontline, today, and the problem will eventually solve itself on its own as long as we don't lapse on it again. I've never seen a flea on me, on our bedding, clothing, furniture, or carpets -- and until this weekend it had been well over a decade since I'd seen one on any of my cats.
It is a problem, of course, but it comes with having cats; fleas are easy to pick up from nearly anywhere, but they're also fairly easy to get rid of if the cats are on medications (which they are, again, now). Large flea infestations inside homes can be difficult to manage and take more time to get rid of, but I can tell you that I've lived in places with large infestations of fleas and as long as you vacuum and clean things and treat the animals? Not hard, they're gone in a few weeks or months. As our house does not currently have a large infestation since I'd never seen or had been bitten by any of them, and never physically saw them on any of the cats until Daisy combed a few of them out of Charlie, we do not have a large infestation; it appears to be a small, fairly recent population of them that we're already taking steps to mitigate.
Daisy, of course, sprang into action and began doing research, had multiple calls with our vet's office and put down diatomaceous earth onto the floor and into the carpets -- if you don't know what that is, I wouldn't blame you; it is a flour-like powder that works as an insecticide and is a biomineral that's pretty harmless to humans and animals but will absolutely kill bugs of pretty much all sorts. We always have it in the house as in the fall months, we usually put lines of it along the windows and doors to keep bugs and spiders from trying to come in. Spiders hate the stuff. How it actually works is that it immediately dehydrates and kills bugs, I guess. At least that's how it was explained to me long ago. I can't say that I've done large amounts of research on it.
Well, apparently, it is a very effective flea deterrent and will kill them quickly, and our vet's office agreed with Daisy that this was a wildly good first step to take. So, over this weekend, Daisy spent an inordinate amount of time vacuuming everything possible and covering every carpeted surface in the house, as well as the furniture, in a layer of this powder. The cycle is to vacuum it all up every 2 days or so and reapply, vacuum again 2 days later, reapply, etc etc until no fleas exist anymore. It can take a month or three for heavier infestations, but eh...again, we don't really have that.
The side effect is that your home will look like street gangs had a knife fight while double-fisting bags of cocaine in-between vacuuming and reapplication processes.
Daisy also dipped her hands in the bag, and massaged light amounts of the diatomaceous earth directly into the cats' coats. They all look slightly dusty now, although I will say that they're going to anyway given the amount of the powder Daisy put down around the house, in every room. These cats lounge on the floors and furniture, and there's powder everywhere they'd lay (Daisy even went to the trouble of coating the cat trees in it).
It is what it is. I am not concerned with the problem as a whole, really. It's another thing in a long list of things that will be dealt with piecemeal, and even while I lived in two different houses with animals with fleas, I know that they can be mitigated and eliminated as long as you keep the animals treated. The diatomaceous earth can only help and will only end the flea crisis faster. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the multiple other crises and problems we have and handle every day. I find stuff like head lice and bedbugs (thankfully, neither of which have we ever experienced) far more terrifying than a few fleas on the cats, fleas we've likely had for much longer than we realized and are just now noticing only because Daisy got a few bites on her feet and started looking for them. It's not life-changing for me; I'm living my life the same way I have lived it every day, just now with powder on the floor and the vacuum running every two days.
In other news, today is Charlie's 1st birthday. I plan to get photos of him in the requisite birthday hat this afternoon or this evening, and once I do, I'll post them here. It's another thing to add to the near-endless list of tasks to do over the rest of the month, but it is important to me.
Oh, I should also mention that it was not Pete who was, as Daisy had dubbed them, the "mad shitter."
It was Mable.
Mable has been somewhat bullied by both Emmy and Gary -- aside from Gary, she is the smallest cat in the house in terms of size. But, she's also female and she's not really aggressive in any way, so that makes her a prime target for being dominated by the other cats. I've always said that Mable will never start a fight, but she will absolutely finish one. Pete, Hank, and Charlie don't go after her, but we're convinced that Gary has a crush on Mable and therefore likes to pounce on her back, dig in his nails and teeth, and try to hold her down/dominate her.
Emmy, as the diva of the household and the only other female, has a classic sibling rivalry with her and will challenge her for spots on the couch, challenge her while eating, and will try to run her out of the litter pan -- which is probably the most telling reason why Mable decided to shit on the floor not once but twice, and in the cat tree twice as well. How do we know it was her? A few nights ago she came over to me while I was working, got some love and scratches, then jumped into the pouch of the cat tree and laid down a thick pile of turds.
How nice.
Daisy had ordered a brand new, giant stainless steel hooded litter pan off Chewy during their Black Friday sale. It was, ahem, not cheap. But she wanted to give Mable a pan of her own, so to speak, that would allow her more litter territory and hopefully ease some anxiety. When we got it and Daisy set it up -- it's so large that it takes an entire 40lb bag of litter all at once -- Mable began using it that night and the "mad shitting" stopped.
From the moment I saw the first bunch of shit in the cat tree pouch, I knew it wasn't Pete. Pete may be old and has some senior moments from time to time, but he could not physically get in and out of that cat tree pouch. The old man is basically crippled from age and his body deterioration -- it's a good day for him if he can walk across a room in a straight line or jump up onto the couch, bed, or ottoman without falling, since his back legs are very weak and stiff now.
In addition to a smaller cat tree for the kitchen, a cardboard cat house for the upstairs bedroom, a new cat yurt tent, and a new tall scratching post pole Daisy added to the corner of our dining room -- all other Chewy Black Friday purchases -- all of the cats now feel like they have more entertainment and territory, and a lot of the household tensions have ceased. The extra Feliway plug we got as well probably helps too.
As part of her "do one thing every day to improve the house" plan that Daisy implemented a few weeks ago, today she is replacing the weatherstripping around our front door and is putting down a new door sweep to see if we can stop the draftiness of the bottom floor of the house. She did this for our back french doors a few weeks ago, too. The Double Trouble boys are enamored with her work and constantly try to get in the way or get into things while Daisy does it, no matter what she's doing.
And so, life goes on..
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