Confused

Hi All! Please dont beat me up over what I am about to talk about......
I have had many cats my entire life. We have had our 5 for a very very long time. I have NEVER had any physical problems EVER!
Well since he brought in Fluffy, I started getting these strange welts, and marks and my skin is now covered in these crazy welts marks scabs, ect.
I never considered it having anything to do with the new cat. I have a long history of shingles, although these dont look quite like shingles I thought it was a form of them. Yesterday I went to the doctor and he said it was an alergy to fleas!!!!!!!!!!! What the heck?? How could I all of a sudden after living with cats and many times living with fleas why am I now alergic? I dont understand.
Well getting rid of any of my cats is out of the question, I am willing to live with the marks. Call me crazy, I know thats what you are thinking, I just love my babbies too much.
Allison

Allergies can change over time. Can you get the kitties treated for their fleas and get the fleas out of the picture? That would probably be a win-win for everyone - the kitties and you!

Just make sure to get vet remedies for the fleas. DO NOT use over the counter stuff from the grocery store, even flea collars.

You dont need to get rid of cats, it should suffice to try to get rid of the fleas...

Maybe use gloves with new rescues who had not time to get flea treatment.
Dont let the rescues into the apartment before they are entirely defleated.

You must also defleate your apartment.


Allergy isnt necessary something you always had. It may often be something you get.

Or more possibly, Fluffy had some strain of fleas which are more allergy developing then most other strains...

So perhaps, with a little luck, you will not get it again...

But you can never know for sure, so be more careful from now!


Good luck!

One of the best ways to rid your house of fleas is to buy a few flea collars and cut them up and put them inside the bag or canister of your vacuum. Use one at a time. Empty or throw out the bag every time you vacuum the house and you will need to vacuum the house daily or twice a day. It's a lot of work but it helps a ton. Also if you cannot afford to get the frontline or revolution you can treat the cats by washing them in dawn dish soap. It kills fleas but you will need to be sure to get all of the eggs off so buy a flea comb and comb them out a couple of times a day and have alcohol sitting by you to put anything you catch in the comb.

I don't know why anyone would give you trouble over this. It's very easy to get fleas inside, they'll come in on our pant legs.
As said, talk to your vet about proper flea treatment and about deworming for tapeworms.

There are a lot of flea problem threads on here with tips. If you can get food grade (ie, you could eat it yourself) diatomaceous earth you could use this inside, could dust the cats with it, and could even put a little in their food to control internal parasites. The only problem is that the human food grade DE can be harder to find.
Since you are getting bitten so badly, you do need to treat your home somehow. If it's bad enough you may even consider using a flea bomb (fogger) and you and pets all stay somewhere else for a couple days. If you don't have any pets and your yard has a lot of fleas you may consider treating it, too.

Quick question, though. Are you 100% sure these are fleas coming from your cats?

Some areas, due to weather and just how the environment is there, can become heavily infested when people don't even own any animals themselves. This happened 2001 in the neighborhood I lived in - we had cats and one neighbor had a dog, but the rest of the neighborhood was empty houses and people without pets. Roughly a 2x2 block radius of houses got badly infested with fleas, everyone had them. The fleas showed little to no interest in our cats and were particularly voracious towards people - you'd get swarmed by them.

carlysmom and strangewings have very good advice. I would do all that they suggested. I also have an allergy to fleas. The only time Spud had fleas was about 7 yrs ago when he used to go outside on a leash. He really freaked out, would not walk on the floor, hopped from furniture piece to furniture piece. We spent a couple of days in our RV and bombed the house and used Advantage on him. He hasn't had them since and Thai who is almost 2 has never had fleas either. We really only use Advantage on them once a year as they do not go outside at all now. Good luck! I suffered from my allergy until they came out with Advantage and I'm so thankful its available now.

You've received some great advice. Deal with the fleas first and then let us know how it's going and how your feeling. BTW...I wouldn't get rid of my animals either! We all love them to much!

Allergies almost always develop with exposure, so getting more sensitive to fleas is no big surprise.

And, of course, with any new cat, you never know what they might be bringing in. If they've been outside, it's very likely they will have fleas.

Wonderful advice and support! thanks guys!
Well basically we cant do much right now with the newborns here and Fluffy still wont let us touch her,. Kind of imposible to put Advantage on a cat you cant touch!!! LOL But basically once we adopt out the babbies we will be left with 6 cats. Advantage comes in 3 tubes for 40.00 so we have 6 cats thats 2 packages so all we need to save is 80.00.
We used to spend the 80.00 but always had one tube left.

Advantage is the same formula for dogs and cats I'm told. What I do is buy the dosage for the largest dog, put the advantage in a test tube with a rubber stopper and, with a syringe, measure out the correct dosage for the cat. The syringe comes in handy with ferals because I can shoot the dose through the air and still get them, so long as they are reasonably close. I think it ends up costing like a $1 per dose.

My ex-sister-in-law who is a vet with plenty of cats of her own taught me to do this.

Originally Posted by crazycatlady777

Advantage comes in 3 tubes for 40.00 so we have 6 cats thats 2 packages so all we need to save is 80.00.
We used to spend the 80.00 but always had one tube left.

Click to expand...

My vet is doing a buy one get one free deal on boxes of Advantage (and some dog monthly treatments). Check with your vet and with other local vets as this could possibly be a promo.
Also, Advantage does directly offer a coupon on their site - buy 6 tubes, get one tube free. The shelf-life is a couple years, so it's not as if it will go bad on you.

Do at least look into the human food grade DE. You can put that down on the floor and in their bedding without it harming them. The kitty you can't touch would hopefully lay on a dusted area and get some of the DE on it's fur.