All Cooped Up

I promise we're not white trash!  However, we have had a near-white-trash experience the past couple weeks.

The other day, Mitzi was itching like crazy...after half a day of this, we flipped her over and saw fleas all over her belly.  Gross!  She had been at the Doggy Hotel during our wedding so we assumed she must have picked them up there--but she was still getting a flea bath right away!

About a week later, she was itching again.  She has very sensitive skin to begin with but I'm sure that bathing her in insecticide probably didn't help it any.  I kinda brushed it off but Justin flipped her over and the fleas were back...grrrrrrrrr!

At this point, we decided that Malcolm must have had them as well (even though he didn't show any signs)and they jumped off of him and back on to her.  We spent a Saturday evening giving Mitzy her second flea dip and Malcolm his first one.  First of all, giving a cat a bath sucks...it takes the both of us to keep him in the tub.  But then he has this way of wailing that sounds like a small child being tortured.  It's horrible on our ears and I'm sure people think we're doing awful things inside our house!

Finally, both animals had been "treated" and we were so glad to have the fleas behind us.

Or so we thought.

A few days later we found them on Mitzi for a third time!  I was beyond fed up with the situation.  She was absolutely miserable and keeping us up at night from all the itching.  We had just given both animals another dose of Frontline and all the flea dips weren't doing anything.  I called the vet and our only other choice was giving her a daily pill...at $7 a pop!  I didn't like the cost or the fact that she would be putting that kind of stuff INSIDE her body.

I called out to Horticultural Services and they had an insecticide that we could apply to the yard...for $12 :-)  I went out there after work and we applied it to the yard that evening.  The lady at Hort Services said this has been a horrendous year for fleas...guess we weren't white trash after all!  The next day we had a large rain and the insecticide was good to go!

It's been about 10 days since we treated the yard and we haven't found any more fleas on Mitzi.  However, we have kept Malcolm inside this entire time and he is driving us nuts--especially during the weekends when we're home with him.  He's used to going out first thing in the morning, coming in at lunch to eat his food, going back out for the day and by bedtime he's waiting at the back door. But his new routine is a different story--once the sun comes up, he starts crying the most god awful cry nonstop...when that doesn't work, he starts flipping up the edges of the rugs, jumping all over the furniture to get in the windows, pawing on the backdoor and trying to push open the storm door.  After a couple hours, he gives up and finds a sunny spot to sleep in.

All chilled out!

I know he's all cooped up and just wants to be outside, but until we have a few nights of below-freezing temps, he's staying indoors.

We have no idea if our yard already had fleas in it from the previous owner, if they were jumping off other dogs walking down our sidewalk or if Malcolm was bringing them in from roaming the neighborhood.  But regardless of the cause, it was not a fun experience at all!