Ants in my cat's food

I get ants inside the house in winter - they are looking for food & water.
Naturally they seem to eventually find the cat food.
Should I be worried about her eating them? I was extrapolating from the threat of worms if they eat fleas (luckily Butterfly has never had a problem with them!).

I only read this one Q&A on Google, and it looks like there is nothing to worry about. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/49026

THANKS!

tomfarr & Butterfly

You'll find some useful ideas in this article
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-can-i-ke...f-my-house.htm

and in these articles in general
http://www.google.com/custom?q=keepi...om&sitesearch=

However, I do want to share with you my personal experience because it's not what you'll find in most of the articles. I had two of the most horrific ant invasions - literally hundreds and hundreds of ants coming in from outside ( no, I'm not exaggerating!!!!) when I had foods containing apple cider vinegar and ordinary white vinegar on my kitchen counter. Ants are supposed to hate these things, but I guess the ants we have in this area have never heard of this. I was in a total panic. To make a long story short, after trying different things to get rid of them, eventually I realized they HATE Glass Pus and spraying Glass Plus everywhere I saw them stopped the invasion practically immediately.

I don't know if your cat eating ants is bad for their health or not. We always have ants, spiders, you name it in the Summer. Ants never got into the cat food. But got into Lynxx's toy box. We threw everything away. We went out and replaced it for him. We then kept his food up on a cutting board my mother got. It's off the ground and never had ant problems there. Soon as Spring comes, that's where Luna and Midnight's food/water dishes will be. Also we have Terminix, and they come out every 90 days and spray the house, inside and out. They do get rid of the ants, to bad they can't get rid of the spiders.

You can spray orange oil around the baseboards and doorways of your house. It'll repel the ants as well as kill them. It's not toxic to cats or humans either. You could even spray at the base of your cat food if you keep it in a plastic tub (as in underneath the bottom of the tub, not where it would come into contact with any cat food).

Ants are fine if your cat eats a couple. My cats eat spiders, or at least do something to them that prevents any new webs from forming. They even make chocolate covered ants as a delicacy for humans.

My sister got the ants cleared from her patio using food grade diatomaceous earth. She used the food grade version of it as her dog used to hang out on the patio and she didn't want to sprinkle down anything poisonous in fear he might lick his paws. An animal can eat the food grade version with no ill effects, and in fact, some people use it to deworm their animals. I've used it in my carpets to kill fleas (works better than anything). I hear it also works great for bedbugs (with the invasion of them all over the world right now, it's good to know).

Originally Posted by Momofmany

My sister got the ants cleared from her patio using food grade diatomaceous earth. She used the food grade version of it as her dog used to hang out on the patio and she didn't want to sprinkle down anything poisonous in fear he might lick his paws. An animal can eat the food grade version with no ill effects, and in fact, some people use it to deworm their animals. I've used it in my carpets to kill fleas (works better than anything). I hear it also works great for bedbugs (with the invasion of them all over the world right now, it's good to know).

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I second the diatomaceous earth. We stuffed it under the baseboards where the ants were entering in. Then we put the cats bowls on plates with the DE piled around the edges. Third, we cleaned up any excess food dropped on the floor (I have one cat that tends to push her food out of the bowl). Eventually the ants disappeared.

use the antser -- http://theantser.com/