what makes the Rogue prone to fleas?

question for the experts:

what makes a cat prone to fleas?

While I was away happily on vacation , the Rogue escaped and spent about a week outside with the ferals until the petsitter got him in again. He wasn't on any medication as he's supposed to be indoors, although he heartily disagrees. So when I got back I expected maybe 3 or 4 fleas on him... imagine the surprise when I was greeted not by a white cat , but a grey spotted one (I grabbed him, gave him a bath with flea shampoo which lost about 10, then spent the night picking 50 more off while the Rogue got increasingly uncooperative. Then put advantage on everyone with a double dose on the delinquent because despite his stay at summercamp, he's still quite porky. The next day he continued to drop half-dead fleas).

So the puzzler is, the ferals I see aren't showing any signs of fleas.

Does anyone out there have an idea what makes a cat susceptible?

Are you saying some cats are more susceptible to catching fleas than others? Kind of like how some people seem to be tastier to mosquitoes than other people? I suppose that could be possible, although I would think they'd jump on anything they can feed on. Maybe Rouge has more refined blood than the ferals! :lol3:

So the Rogue is overweight? Maybe that is part of it.

We had a cat that we called the Moose. That wasn't his name, it was Shadow, but he was so huge. I am ashamed to state his high weight, but after a sustained weight loss effort on "light" food from the vet (I didn't know any better), we got him down to 25 pounds. Anyway, we had multiple cats then and the fleas loved the Moose. The others, not so much. But we treated him and picked fleas off him constantly. We suspected there was something about his body composition due to the extra weight that attracted the fleas.