Why Fleas Do Well in a Queensbury Family House
Nearly every household flea in London is the cat flea, and it lives perfectly well on a dog. These are family houses with several carpeted bedrooms, often one more since the loft was converted, rugs over hard floors downstairs, and a long garden that other animals cross at night. A pet picks fleas up outdoors, brings them in and settles in its usual three or four places, and from that point the problem belongs to the rooms rather than the animal. Larvae wriggle down away from the light, into the pile along the skirting line and under beds and sofas, which is precisely where a vacuum head does not go. Where fleas hide around the home lists the places worth a look, beds and sofas included.
The spots a pet chooses
Work out where the animal actually sleeps rather than where its bed is meant to be. A dog that lies across the threshold between the kitchen extension and the hall, a cat that spends every sunny afternoon on a bedroom windowsill, a crate in the utility room by the back door: each of those has had eggs dropping into it for weeks. Those are the rooms to count when you book, and they are not always the rooms where the bites were first noticed.
Foxes and cats out in the garden
Long gardens backing onto one another give neighbouring cats an easy run, and foxes lie up through the day in the dry space beneath a shed, a garden office or decking. Fleas fall off a resting animal, so those places hold eggs and larvae even though nothing lives there permanently, and your own pet collects them on its next patrol. The treatment is for the rooms in the house rather than the garden, and the void under decking is dealt with on Pest Control Queensbury. Do not close a gap under a shed or decking until you are certain nothing is using it.
How the Rooms Are Counted
Flea treatment is priced by the room because the rooms are where the work is. A room counts when it has carpet, a rug or upholstered furniture the animal has used, or where people are being bitten. Halls, landings and stairs are not counted as rooms, even when they are carpeted. A kitchen with a hard floor and a dog bed in the corner is worth describing so we can tell you how it fits into the booking, and if you are unsure whether a through lounge is one room or two, say so and we will work it out with you rather than leaving it to the doorstep.
Getting the Rooms Ready
- Ask your vet about treating every cat and dog in the household at the same time, including one that is mostly outdoors
- Vacuum slowly along the skirtings, under the beds and around the edge of every rug, then empty the drum straight into the outside bin
- Wash pet bedding, blankets and throws on a hot cycle where the labels allow it
- Lift shoes, toys and storage boxes off the floors so the whole carpet can be reached
- Write down the rooms that need doing, leaving the hall, the stairs and the landing off the list
Preparing a property for flea treatment has the full list, and the Brent flea advice guide takes the wider view. A vet's product and a room treatment do two different jobs, which is the point of whether pet flea treatments clear the house.
In the weeks after
Carry on vacuuming every day or two. Pupae sit tight in their cocoons and open over a period rather than together, and the vibration of a vacuum is one of the things that brings them out, so the odd flea afterwards is expected rather than a surprise. How long it goes on depends on the house and on how long the population had been building. How long flea treatment takes to work covers the timing, and if bites are not easing or you are still finding live fleas, tell us which room and at what time of day. Why fleas can still bite after treatment gives the usual reasons.
Keeping Fleas Out of the House
Almost all of this comes back to the animals and the places they rest. Flea Control Brent covers treatments elsewhere in the borough, and Sudbury deals with the same mix of family homes and pets.
- Keep the pet's flea protection going right through the year on your vet's advice, not only in warm weather
- Put the vacuum round wherever the animal sleeps once a week, and wash its bedding on the same trip
- Once you are sure nothing is living under it, mesh off the gap beneath a shed or a garden office
- If cats from other gardens let themselves in through the cat flap, a microchip flap stops them
- Ask the vet to look over a new or rescue animal before it has the run of the carpets
