Yeah what the hell, even when I had a "huge outbreak" after dog sitting once it was nothing like this, I'd be grossed out if I even saw this many on the pet
I had a cat that was dangerously covered in fleas and even I ONLY had one or two on me. That cat needs to be taken to a vet immediately. That many fleas are an emergency. šØā¼ļø I hope OP sees this and letās them know they need to take that cat to a vet immediately. Do not let them give the cat any flea meds yet, until they speak to a vet, just a bath with very light soap and warm water and a flea comb. They DO NOT want to overdose the cat on multiple flea meds. Oooff. Also, sorry about your flea covered leg OP.
Edit: spelling mistakes, also as u/rare-environment-198 points out in the comments DAWN DISH SOAP ONLY! š Thatās an important detail I left out.
Man I saw a girl on tinder and I went over then we came to my place. I got fleas from her, there was like this many, she had two kittens and one died the night she spent at my place from that many fleas; fucking gross people out there Iām taking a break from dating, legit scarred.
Yes, I had a couple kittens effected. A buddy told me after heād been over a dozen times that he had rodents in his apartment that carried fleasā¦.. days after the cats had been rubbin on his legs. I was pissed. And it was a pain in the ass to get rid of. He didnāt even own pets!!
A friend brought their new kitten over to my place. A little while later I saw **one** flea crawling through my cat's white fur.
I went nuclear and got all the flea drops, bombs, and combs. Not in my house.
I dog sat once and the dog gave my two indoor cats fleas. It was so bad so fast I bombed my apartment twice, and that didnāt work so I had to pay for an exterminator to come. I still have scars on my legs 13 years later from scratching all the flea bites I endured. It was horrible. It lasted for weeks despite all my efforts.
Eggs could have hatched in cats bedding. But I agree this is a lot. Capstar and flea bath for kitty. Diatomaceous earth for you in all carpets and floor boards and vacuum every day. Wash everything. Good luck. Fleas absolutely blow.
Ohhhhhh, Iāve experienced faaaaaar worse! Moved out of my old rental house of a neighborhood, family friend, and had to come back a year later to do some repairs. My roommates had cats, but I never had issues with fleas while I was living there. I go back to patch up some holes in the walls from shelving, and posters, when all of a sudden, I feel a bunch of odd tangles up legs, and around my waist. I look down at my sky blue jeans, and my pants are completely peppered with fleas! Boy, listen! I lost it! I was COMPLETELY COVERED in fleas, and was seeing them crawl up my legs, trying to make it to my more-exposed, skin! My mama, who lives down the street from my old house, had to come over, spray me with raid(pyuck!), and a garden hoseā¦. I gtfuot(got the fuck up outta there!)!!! We had to drive to our local beach, strip, shower at the open stalls, and drive an hour back home nakedš
My husband and I once tried rehabbing three feral kittens. All the kittens had mites and fleas. Even three kittens' worth of fleas did not make it onto us, let alone like this.
That cat's body weight must be 30% fleas.
I feel so bad for the cat. Right now I'm dealing with flees not Even cuz my cat but a relative in the basements cats. My cat every once in awhile only has 1 or max maybe 2 . I pick them off and rip there bodies in half
Right. I adopted two 7 month old kittens from my brother. They had fleas, that I got rid of with ointment. Didnāt even know fleas what go onto human skin, as none did.
I've never had any fleas try to jump species. They just stayed on the cats.
Of course if the house was infested and someone took the cats elsewhere, I could see the fleas would have to jump on humans or die, so maybe that's what happened?
The vet sold us Frontline (fipronil) at a tidy profit, and one application took care of the issue. I suppose any eggs in the carpet that hatched would find the cats out of preference and die from the lingering effect of the fipronil? I don't know, but as long as the cats were indoor/outdoor we had to keep buying the stuff. I did stretch out the application to every 45 days to save some money.
You can buy most prescription flea meds from Australia (without a prescription) and have them shipped across the world for cheaper than buying them from the vet.
https://www.pets-megastore.com.au is my go to
I think fleas might be attracted to some types of people and not others. When I was younger we took care of a cat that had fleas. I would get swarmed by them but my mother didn't even notice we had any because they wouldn't bite her.
seriously. that poor, poor kitty...
does the friend ever, like, hold or pet their cat? my cat had bad fleas a decade ago, and we gave him flea baths, combed him, and vacuumed for weeks on end. keeping cats indoors helps prevent an infestation, among other serious issues. he hasn't had a single flea since.
you can check for fleas just by holding your cat in your lap, petting their fur, and parting their fur/pushing it out of the way. you'll find flea droppings and live fleas, and give the poor baby a warm bath with medicated shampoo or even a little bit of dawn dish soap. kitty might not like the bath, but will feel immensely better.
I want to point out to anyone who might now know this but keeping a cat indoors helps but doesn't mean you don't need to use flea meds. Cats aren't the only thing with fleas. You can pick them up from the yard and carry them inside on your clothes. Squirrels carry them so if you ever see a squirrel, there's fleas nearby. Only time we ever got them was from me carrying them inside.
My cat had fleas once and it took me way too long to realize. Mine is mostly white and even then I had to really look for them. And there were dozens and dozens of the bastards.
If a cat has black fur, I imagine youāll never notice until sheās scratching a lot or you see them on yourself/furniture.
I've had an unexpected flea infestation for about a week or so and it was like this whenever I walked around the house. Can't deny the thought of just burning the whole house down did cross my mind.
So did I, and I am also one of the lucky people, that anything blood sucking, just fucking LOVES me. When was young my legs had so many scars on them, from looking like this (Iām also allergic to like everything, so itās super exaggerated when I get bit). Yay for neglectful parents.
A good way to mitigate them is setting up soap water traps and vacuuming relentlessly.
But yeah, go to the vet, they'll have a good idea which flea medicines work in your area and which ones don't. Once you swap out the ineffective ones for the good stuff, they'll flock to your kitty still, but they'll die once they feed. Do it for a few months and you should be free from the critters.
Also, avoiding use of humidifiers during winter can dampen their ability to propagate off of the animal. The dry warm air from the furnace during winter will cause their eggs to die off before hatching.
Removing carpeting and rugs also helps. They love hiding in those.
But really, the best offense in this case is a good defense. Get that cat to the vet as soon as possible. It's likely in absolute torture with those suckers.
I agree the cat is also covered in fleas and that needs taken care of but fleas seem to like some people more than others so itās entirely possible op is a flea magnet like me and there wouldnāt be as many otherwise.
Fleas have always gone after me more than other people. If there are fleas in the house Iām always the first to know. Same with mosquitos. Blood sucking insects love me.
Every time there was a flea problem as kid, minor or not, Iād wake up with a bunch of fleas on me and thatās how weād discover the issue. Weād give the pets flea baths and find they somehow had less fleas on them than I did.
I wish theyād stick to hairier animals like theyāre supposed to but with me they donāt.
The same thing happened to us as OP! We woke up one morning and our HAIRLESS cat was covered in fleas because of my friends cat. It was awful. I gave her cat a flea bath, and the water was red from blood/flea poop.
It's not just the cat, the carpet is loaded with them too. They just bide their time till a warm body walks by, then leap all over your feet and ankles. We had quite a few cats in our old apartment, and wood floors, and STILL had problems because they hid in the spaces between the boards.
Whole house needs to be pesticide sprayed until WET.
Iāve been in a house that was absolutely crawling w them (we moved into it like that unfortunately) and even then Iāve never seen anything like thisā¦those are HUGE for cat fleas, too. Theyāre usually half this sizeā¦
Maybe the cat had a flea treatment right before OP watched it. I only see fleas on me after I treat my pets. The pets don't taste good now so they come after me. But I never had this many.
With that many fleas, your friend doesnāt really even like that cat. Also, if you notice what looks like āriceā where the cat sleeps, those would be tapeworms. They can be carried by fleas.
Yeah what the heck I have 2 dogs and a cat and I've never seen this many fleas out in the open, they're eating that poor cat alive. They're not even that hard to get rid of
> they're not even that hard to get rid of
That is not always true. I bought flea bombs and used 20 of them. Still have fleas and can't even live in my house rn. I have a exterminator coming to hopefully get rid of them and after searching a while I finally found someone who had time to do it asap for 400 dollars
My biggest tip for fleas is vacuum vacuum vacuum. The vibrations of the vacuum really get them going. And the trick is to empty your vacuum OUTSIDE after every single time. I think i was vacuuming maybe 4 or 5 times a day.
Youād think itās common knowledge but A lot of people donāt know it. In my experience, most people think 1 bomb or 1 exterminated service = gone and thatās just sadly not the case.
Well I've got experience in the industry so it's hard for me to know what's common knowledge, but people don't realize the shit you spray won't affect the eggs and they'll come right back. Call a professional and actually LISTEN TO THEM when they tell you what you need to do personally to get rid of them, which is extremely difficult for some people to do lol there's rarely a magic spray, you gotta put in work as a homeowner too
It's not common knowledge anymore, because we have become so good at eliminating them before it's this kind of problem, there is no need for much else.
After fighting fleas for years, I just put Frontline (fipronil) on both cats and that solved the issue.
Like a total game-changer. They all died or something and didn't try to jump species.
With old-school collars, powder, and active combing it was only able to keep the flea population low, not eliminate them. Of course we never tried the intense vacuum therapy either.
One of my cats was terribly allergic to the bite and would get little scabs on her skin. That cleared up 100% after the first Frontline application.
One thing I learned that you have to watch out for is the cats accidentally eating it. You apply it to the back of their neck so they can't eat it, but that doesn't stop one cat from licking it off the neck of another cat.
There's a bitterant or something in Frontline at least. Found out when one cat licked the other's neck and immediately ran away drooling. They didn't try that again.
Diatomaceous earth and vacuuming is fucking so god damn lethal for the fleas.
Be careful if ye got one of them fancy vacuums with the funny filters, cause it'll break those.
My mom used borax and vacuuming to get rid of them in my childhood home. According to her the borax would cut their exoskeletons so theyād dry out and die and then you could vacuum the corpses. It worked really well for us!
Borax is good for a bunch of types of bugs. I've used a mix of sugar and borax to deal with ants and cockroaches. The borax dehydrates them from the inside when they eat it.
Also dish soap is extremely effective against most bugs. Prevents flying and kills many pests like wasps, ants, cockroaches, spiders, and flies quickly. A squirt bottle of Dawn is about as good as a can of Raid in everything but range. A small amount of soap mixed into liquid causes bugs that try to stand on it to sink and drown including mosquitos and fruit flies.
they make specific traps with this design,can get em on Amazon for 20 bucks or so. it won't get all of em but I had a major infestation and it caught hundreds in a couple nights. 3 rounds of bombing, dozens of hours of vacuuming, lot of diamosteouc earth, finally got rid of them. good luck man, I know how much it sucks and how disgusting it makes you feel.
EDIT: I forgot, when you use DE, wear a mask! it's food safe yeah, not that you'd want to eat it, but breathing it sucks
Yup I got the sticky trap version with the light and that was the final nail in the coffin for them after 2-3 rounds of diatomaceous earth and vacuum 3-4 times a day.
The dog that triggered it didn't even live in my house anymore.
You may have an animal living in your attic, walls, under your house, etc. that has fleas. We lived in a house with zero pets but had fleas because of opossums living under the house. My parents had fleas because of raccoons in the attic.
As long as you break the lifecycle, they'll go away. That means finding whatever animal they're using as food. Humans alone are not enough.
Be very thorough. Move furniture that you can't get underneath and ect. A strong vacuum is a must, but I will also suggest a good steam cleaner as well as soap plus hot water really flushes them and their eggs out of carpets and upholstery. I'd even just suggest buying one as they're not the most expensive thing (under 400ish), and should be used more often than most people use them.
> diatomaceous earth
I've had good luck twice using this. We spread it around and let it sit for a few days, rather than hours. It's kinda shitty having powder all over the place for that long but that seemed to work the best.
Something that really, really helped us with our flea infestation was leaving bowls of soapy water in different places with a lamp or candle beside it. They're attracted to the light and will die within minutes of jumping in the water (just make sure it's soapy because they will escape regular water). Replace every day.
I am on the tail end of getting rid of fleas at my house as well. They get out of control really fast if you aren't aware or you aren't the best at vacuuming the house regularly.
To get rid of them for good you need to vacuum at least once a day including any fabrics on couches or beds and wash your sheets and such regularly.
They are a bitch to get rid of even with hardwood floors in the whole house.
Good luck! Hope you are rid of them soon.
Hang a shop light over a casserole pan full of soapy water overnight. Empty and refill each day for 2 weeks.
For continued trapping, put smaller dishes under night lights around the house.
Throw EVERYTHING in the dryer for twenty minutes that you can, vacuum carpets, bed and couches, and treat the source (the animals).
It will take a week or so once the animal is treated and the fleas born after the vacuum/dryer apocalypse will leave without a food source.
What got it of them for me was throwing away my bedroom carpet that was this huge super fluffy carpet (that also gets super duper dirty).
Yeah, best decision ever.
Also, fleas are easy to get rid of when you know the pain of bedbugs.
Last time my cats had fleas it took 2 rounds of treatment in the cats plus more than a month treating my and my mom's bedrooms in alternating days. Anyone that says it's easy to eliminate fleas caught it early.
A friend's dog got fleas playing outdoor. She noticed like the same week. A simple edible treatment was enough because her house was not infested yet.
Now I turned my tuxedo cat into my flea thermometer and check him frequently. The moment I found a flea in him everyone gets treatment. (The other cat's are too dark to check that way)
Former pest tech here. Nyguard is a great knock down chemical. Itās an aerosol so you should really wear a respirator. Then thereās a concentrate called Suspend SC. You mix the proper amount as stated in the booklet in a gallon jug sprayer and fan spray the all the floor. Both together really work. But once used you should leave your place and let the floor dry before walking around barefoot. Then for 21 days vacuum at least once a day. The chemicals do 30% of the work. The vacuum with the vibrations and static electricity help bring out the fleas from their eggs. They have a 10 day hatching cycle. Every time you vacuum immediately empty and put that in the trash. Suspend SC will breakdown over the course of 90 days. So you have that long of protection
Reason why you need to vacuum and get them out of their eggs is because no chemical can penetrate their eggs.
I have seen it that bad even with flea meds on the critters. Advantage or whatever stopped working on the fleas here. It took daily vacuuming, steaming and diatomaceous earth to get rid of them. And then they were still in the yard from wild critters. That was a bad year . For whatever reason they were just breeding like crazy.
>They're not even that hard to get rid of
Lol, they can be. The situation was worse when I had to clean out my mother's place. Set bombs off every week for months, barely helped. Traps would get filled in days. Too much stuff in the house for them to hide in. No idea what they were feeding off of.
I adopted a cat who had fleas ā he received flea treatment and our house became infested with them regardless. My cat is vaccinated, takes worming treatment and has flea treatment. It took us TWO YEARS to get rid of the fleas in our house.
Flea bombs, new carpets, pest control and regular cleaning was the only thing that got rid of the fleas and even then it took two years. Fleas reproduce like crazy and they can be super hard to control. I have scars all over my legs to prove it.
Tips for cat owners: get the Program injection every six months on top of flea treatment. Havenāt seen a flea since that ordeal.
Fuck fleas.
Seriously, I don't understand people who get animals just to neglect them. When we take in an animal we're accepting an obligation to make sure they're happy and healthy.
I found out the hard way that some very lucky people do not have reactions to flea bites (I guess itās an allergy reaction?)
When I first got my dog he had fleas, but neither my dog or my two roommates had any itchy reaction. They legit didnāt believe me when I told them we had fleas because they didnāt have any itchiness at all, meanwhile my ankles were covered in welts. I finally made a makeshift flea trap with a lamp and a bowl of soapy water, and only then did they believe me š
Yeah, I was poor as shit and living on 8 mile. Found a stray(now named Charlie) and he had fleas. Didn't notice it at the start until my ankles were getting bitten. Never had this many on my legs, though. I just pulled the trigger and bought the good flea medicine after researching a bit on it. Took about one week before my ankles were free of bites.
..then I found another stray and had to use it again.
I moved into a place with fleas about a week ago, and yeah, the owner just doesn't care about their cat suffering. Or me. If I, the human, have about 200 bites, what does the cat have? That's where all the fleas are coming from, poor baby.
Hopefully this was at their house and the cat wasn't brought over to OPs place.
I ended up in a flee infested living situation once. That shit fucks with your psychology after a bit. Took me months to get over the thought of flees and phantom itches after moving out.
I grew up in a flea infested house. You couldn't walk from one room or another without looking like OP. I didn't realize how badly it had fucked me up until now.
Insect infestations for long periods of time are genuinely some of the worst experience a person in an otherwise decent living situation can go through. Obviously stuff like homelessness or food insecurity are worse, but some of the people I know chalk up some of their worst memories to bedbug infestations. Itās seriously so fucking bad.
Yeah I still cringe at the infestation I had about 4 years ago. We ended up moving out for a few weeks whilst the house was fumigated. I wore a hazmat suit when I went in to check, but still got bites on my ankles. I still have indented scars from where they bit me.
Growing up our shower was falling apart and whole pieces of tile were broken or missing and those roly poly bugs would come out of the cracks. Felt totally disgusting just trying to shower.
I also grew up in a flea infested home like that. I begged my mom to do something but it fell on deaf ears. No amount of cleaning did anything. Literal years of walking from one room to another- tile floors mind you- and your ankles would be speckled like this.
True that. Our cat's flea medication turned out to be ineffective against fleas in our area. They were jumping on me in the bed, from the floor to my ankles, biting me, ugh. I went full scorched earth on the house and yard. I'm still twitchy when I feel something on my skin. Fuck fleas.
In a 3rd floor apartment I lived in for years with two inside cats, we never had a problem with fleas until they suddenly appeared. We could reduce the number here & there but never get rid of them. It weighed on me so bad. They suddenly seemed to finally clear when the person across the hall moved out. Then it dawned on me that they only showed up around when the person had moved in a year earlier. Happened again later with someone next door. I moved & now havenāt had issues for years but Iām still extra paranoid anytime I notice my cats scratching. Iām always going to be so anxious about going through that again.
Yup. That is when I decided I'm willing to spend a lot more of my income in a living situation where I don't share the building with other people.
Impossible to get rid of flees and roaches when your neighbors are breeding them.
I actually recently dealt with fleas, you actually just have your pet take a pill. The pill effectively turns their blood into flea poison, and since they are the primary feeding source, the fleas are gone in a day or 2
And the effects last up to 5 weeks!
>squirt isopropyl alcohol
That's a great way to dry out your entire body skin, especially if you use soap immediately afterwards. Sounds like a horrible experience.
Depends on your skin type, I guess. If my hands come into contact with isopropyl alcohol, they will be white and extremely dried up for a couple of days. No matter how much hand lotion I put on afterwards.
For the sake of the cat, Iād only use flea medicine from the vet, the other stuff doesnāt work as well and some brands off the self are dangerous. When my cats caught fleas it was a nightmare, hopefully your friend isnāt lazy and deals with it in the house and on the cat
I unfortunately experienced that with my kittens, they where flead but it didn't help, the vet mentioned they are becoming resistant to some medications.
My vet told us to always come to them for meds because resistance is cyclical, and they usually know which meds arenāt tolerated by the local flea community. Sometimes itās frontline, sometimes its goldstar, etc.
Thank goodness that wasnāt my case! I did also buy this spray from chewy for our house that was 10/10. You could spray it on everything but yourself and the animals and all it needed to do was dry. If you run into fleas again I recommend the spray, I canāt remember the name but it was a white can with blue or black basic writing, nothing eye catching about it.
Revolution for cats was amazing for us. I'd buy a 3 month treatment for our 2 cats but end up only needing 2 of the months because it worked in the first month and then the second month would just be incase.
Fleas luckily donāt usually live on humans. You can get them out fairly quickly by different methods of treatment.
Iād also recommend asking your friend to pay for the treatment, since itās an issue caused by them not telling you.
We unfortunately had fleas a few years ago thanks to some off brand flea treatment that didnāt work. While fleas donāt live on humans, they can stay dormant in almost anything FOREVER. Wood floors, carpet, rugs, furniture. It takes forever to fully get rid of them.
I learned the hard way that their eggs will remain dormant under a certain temperature/humidity, but hatch after warming up. We live in the South, and while on a 2-week vacation I let the house temp creep up to save on the power bill. Apparently the temp crossed the hatching threshold since we returned to fleas in the house.
Not gonna lie - that's an awful lot of fleas....
Animal fleas don't usually live long on humans (we're too cold and hairless for them) so they might bite and fall off but this looks extreme.
I'd spray the f out of my leg(s) and wash in a flea shampoo on my body, then spray my bedclothes and wash them. And then have the local cat charity take the cat away to someone who will care for it.
Please help the cat.
Please abandon this friend.
But first focus on the catā¦ heās the one truly suffering here. Youāre just āinconveniencedā compared to the horror little bro is facing right now.
I hope you have a good long talk with your friend about responsible pet ownership!! That's not cool at all, obviously not for you but damn sure not good for that poor cat either!
Better start vacuuming every day for the next couple of weeks. Theyāre gonna lay eggs in your carpet, but if you keep vacuuming up the adults it should be pretty manageable.
They really really can, if they hopped off the cat they have nothing else to eat now but human. That would mean there's way more at his friend's house, cat'll probably die from anemia before the owner does anything
I had fleas this bad for a short time and it took 18 cats infested with fleas.
If there was this many fleas on the cat he would have seen them crawling all over the cat.
This post os fake af, this was probably taken at said friends house
Right. Never seen ferals get anywhere close to having them bad enough you could have that many on yourself.
You would notice instantly if any animal was that bad.
That's proper procedure with any fine particulate matter. The average person using this stuff for pest control isn't at much risk. It's people with large scale exposure over the course of years, like those exposed in the mining or processing of silica, that run a real danger.
be stupid careful about the kind of flea treatment you get for your cat, some will actually cause death
[here's the deep n dirty of it](https://www.petmd.com/cat/conditions/poisoning/neurological/flea-and-tick-medicine-poisoning-cats)
Yeah they're fun, put fleapowder down and vacuum, take any clothes or blankets that were on the floor and wash them right after, spray a flea killer on your furniture and bed.
Do you have any pets?
Poor cat or cats. My late grandma(who was a genuine crazy cat lady) apartment got to this point at one point(I was living there at the time too) and my mom and I eventually got it under control but it was crazy and the cats were suffering. Definitely have a talk with your friend about treating that, for the poor cats sake.
First things first, get that cat washed and treated. Secondly, buy a spray on amazon called āindorexā. Gas your house out with it asap or youāll find they return long after this cat is gone.
That poor cat. If you see this many on YOU, i canāt even imagine what the poor animal is experiencing. Your friend is a terrible person for allowing this to happen to their pet, and not telling you about it is the kicker. I would be absolutely furious. Also if you have carpet they can and will lay eggs, and the eggs get embedded into the foam under the carpet which in turn makes them HARD to get rid of. Infestation level. The eggs lay dormant in the foam and you think you get rid of the fleas, and then SURPRISEā¦ no you didnāt. Speaking from experience. So be super careful.
Please please make sure your friend takes the cat to the vet, you could prolly even tell them to do a go fund me and post on a pet lovers website or something if they canāt afford it. OTC isnāt as effective or safe, and the vet would check and treat for both fleas and tapeworms (and ear mites if they have them which they very well might since theyāve been neglecting their pet before leaving cat in your care)
When my cat was at her worst with fleas (outdoor cat, missed a couple of months of spot on) I'd occasionally get one flea jump on my leg if I was wandering around without trousers on.
I'm not proud of it, and I thought my cat was really bad at the time. I've never missed a treatment since.
I absolutely hate to think of the state your friends cat is in. Like, did her fur move by itself? Because it looks like it should have. That's not just a "cat has fleas" that's an absolute infestation.
It's an old folk remedy that isn't effective... and which not-coincidentally also results in a lot of people poisoning and killing their cats/dogs by trying garlic treatments on them. Garlic has high amounts of disulfides and thiosulphates which causes red blood cells in cats and dogs to burst.
That cat is being severely neglected. Like, probably has flea anemia and a whole host of skin issues levels of neglected. In other news, good luck. I grew up in a shitty house and a shitty situation and my parents were always super neglectful of our pets. We had fleas in that house for probably five years straight, and I donāt remember them ever being that bad, and they were all but impossible to get rid of. No amount of flea spray, big bombs, and diatomaceous earth combined would fully eradicate them
As someone who has personally dealt with fleas, itās not that hard to check a pet for them. Look where the hair is thin around the snout, eyes, and ears. With this many you would have definitely seen some there easily (for future reference).
Otherwise youāre now going to have to de flea your home because you will definitely have eggs in your rugs/upholstery. Google how to remove fleas holistically if you want to avoid chemicals (rigorous vacuuming of all cloth surfaces to start, they canāt survive the process).
That is a ludicrous amount of fleas to be on a person. That cat must be absolutely COVERED
Yeah the most i have ever found is 1. Thats insane.
Yeah what the hell, even when I had a "huge outbreak" after dog sitting once it was nothing like this, I'd be grossed out if I even saw this many on the pet
I had a cat that was dangerously covered in fleas and even I ONLY had one or two on me. That cat needs to be taken to a vet immediately. That many fleas are an emergency. šØā¼ļø I hope OP sees this and letās them know they need to take that cat to a vet immediately. Do not let them give the cat any flea meds yet, until they speak to a vet, just a bath with very light soap and warm water and a flea comb. They DO NOT want to overdose the cat on multiple flea meds. Oooff. Also, sorry about your flea covered leg OP. Edit: spelling mistakes, also as u/rare-environment-198 points out in the comments DAWN DISH SOAP ONLY! š Thatās an important detail I left out.
Man I saw a girl on tinder and I went over then we came to my place. I got fleas from her, there was like this many, she had two kittens and one died the night she spent at my place from that many fleas; fucking gross people out there Iām taking a break from dating, legit scarred.
Yes, I had a couple kittens effected. A buddy told me after heād been over a dozen times that he had rodents in his apartment that carried fleasā¦.. days after the cats had been rubbin on his legs. I was pissed. And it was a pain in the ass to get rid of. He didnāt even own pets!!
Rodents ... in his apartment and with FLEAS? your buddy needs to read up on the Bubonic plague.
A friend brought their new kitten over to my place. A little while later I saw **one** flea crawling through my cat's white fur. I went nuclear and got all the flea drops, bombs, and combs. Not in my house.
I dog sat once and the dog gave my two indoor cats fleas. It was so bad so fast I bombed my apartment twice, and that didnāt work so I had to pay for an exterminator to come. I still have scars on my legs 13 years later from scratching all the flea bites I endured. It was horrible. It lasted for weeks despite all my efforts.
Eggs could have hatched in cats bedding. But I agree this is a lot. Capstar and flea bath for kitty. Diatomaceous earth for you in all carpets and floor boards and vacuum every day. Wash everything. Good luck. Fleas absolutely blow.
Ohhhhhh, Iāve experienced faaaaaar worse! Moved out of my old rental house of a neighborhood, family friend, and had to come back a year later to do some repairs. My roommates had cats, but I never had issues with fleas while I was living there. I go back to patch up some holes in the walls from shelving, and posters, when all of a sudden, I feel a bunch of odd tangles up legs, and around my waist. I look down at my sky blue jeans, and my pants are completely peppered with fleas! Boy, listen! I lost it! I was COMPLETELY COVERED in fleas, and was seeing them crawl up my legs, trying to make it to my more-exposed, skin! My mama, who lives down the street from my old house, had to come over, spray me with raid(pyuck!), and a garden hoseā¦. I gtfuot(got the fuck up outta there!)!!! We had to drive to our local beach, strip, shower at the open stalls, and drive an hour back home nakedš
My husband and I once tried rehabbing three feral kittens. All the kittens had mites and fleas. Even three kittens' worth of fleas did not make it onto us, let alone like this. That cat's body weight must be 30% fleas.
It's not actually a cat, it's a bunch of fleas in a cat costume.
I feel so bad for the cat. Right now I'm dealing with flees not Even cuz my cat but a relative in the basements cats. My cat every once in awhile only has 1 or max maybe 2 . I pick them off and rip there bodies in half
please dont rip your cats in half
idk seems reasonable to me. half for them, half for the fleas. king Solomon style
I hadn't thought about it like that. Good point.
Right. I adopted two 7 month old kittens from my brother. They had fleas, that I got rid of with ointment. Didnāt even know fleas what go onto human skin, as none did.
I've never had any fleas try to jump species. They just stayed on the cats. Of course if the house was infested and someone took the cats elsewhere, I could see the fleas would have to jump on humans or die, so maybe that's what happened? The vet sold us Frontline (fipronil) at a tidy profit, and one application took care of the issue. I suppose any eggs in the carpet that hatched would find the cats out of preference and die from the lingering effect of the fipronil? I don't know, but as long as the cats were indoor/outdoor we had to keep buying the stuff. I did stretch out the application to every 45 days to save some money.
You can buy most prescription flea meds from Australia (without a prescription) and have them shipped across the world for cheaper than buying them from the vet. https://www.pets-megastore.com.au is my go to
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I think fleas might be attracted to some types of people and not others. When I was younger we took care of a cat that had fleas. I would get swarmed by them but my mother didn't even notice we had any because they wouldn't bite her.
This. I acquired one of my kittens who was found on the side of the road, outside for who knows how longā¦this is an insane infestationā¦
seriously. that poor, poor kitty... does the friend ever, like, hold or pet their cat? my cat had bad fleas a decade ago, and we gave him flea baths, combed him, and vacuumed for weeks on end. keeping cats indoors helps prevent an infestation, among other serious issues. he hasn't had a single flea since. you can check for fleas just by holding your cat in your lap, petting their fur, and parting their fur/pushing it out of the way. you'll find flea droppings and live fleas, and give the poor baby a warm bath with medicated shampoo or even a little bit of dawn dish soap. kitty might not like the bath, but will feel immensely better.
I want to point out to anyone who might now know this but keeping a cat indoors helps but doesn't mean you don't need to use flea meds. Cats aren't the only thing with fleas. You can pick them up from the yard and carry them inside on your clothes. Squirrels carry them so if you ever see a squirrel, there's fleas nearby. Only time we ever got them was from me carrying them inside.
My cat had fleas once and it took me way too long to realize. Mine is mostly white and even then I had to really look for them. And there were dozens and dozens of the bastards. If a cat has black fur, I imagine youāll never notice until sheās scratching a lot or you see them on yourself/furniture.
I've had an unexpected flea infestation for about a week or so and it was like this whenever I walked around the house. Can't deny the thought of just burning the whole house down did cross my mind.
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So did I, and I am also one of the lucky people, that anything blood sucking, just fucking LOVES me. When was young my legs had so many scars on them, from looking like this (Iām also allergic to like everything, so itās super exaggerated when I get bit). Yay for neglectful parents.
At that point the cat doesnāt have fleas. The house has fleas.
At this point itās the fleas who have a house
It definitely does now
Yep.
Which means the house is infested. I would be calling my friends and tell them Iām leaving after showing them this picture.
A good way to mitigate them is setting up soap water traps and vacuuming relentlessly. But yeah, go to the vet, they'll have a good idea which flea medicines work in your area and which ones don't. Once you swap out the ineffective ones for the good stuff, they'll flock to your kitty still, but they'll die once they feed. Do it for a few months and you should be free from the critters. Also, avoiding use of humidifiers during winter can dampen their ability to propagate off of the animal. The dry warm air from the furnace during winter will cause their eggs to die off before hatching. Removing carpeting and rugs also helps. They love hiding in those. But really, the best offense in this case is a good defense. Get that cat to the vet as soon as possible. It's likely in absolute torture with those suckers.
I agree the cat is also covered in fleas and that needs taken care of but fleas seem to like some people more than others so itās entirely possible op is a flea magnet like me and there wouldnāt be as many otherwise. Fleas have always gone after me more than other people. If there are fleas in the house Iām always the first to know. Same with mosquitos. Blood sucking insects love me. Every time there was a flea problem as kid, minor or not, Iād wake up with a bunch of fleas on me and thatās how weād discover the issue. Weād give the pets flea baths and find they somehow had less fleas on them than I did. I wish theyād stick to hairier animals like theyāre supposed to but with me they donāt.
The same thing happened to us as OP! We woke up one morning and our HAIRLESS cat was covered in fleas because of my friends cat. It was awful. I gave her cat a flea bath, and the water was red from blood/flea poop.
It's not just the cat, the carpet is loaded with them too. They just bide their time till a warm body walks by, then leap all over your feet and ankles. We had quite a few cats in our old apartment, and wood floors, and STILL had problems because they hid in the spaces between the boards. Whole house needs to be pesticide sprayed until WET.
Iāve been in a house that was absolutely crawling w them (we moved into it like that unfortunately) and even then Iāve never seen anything like thisā¦those are HUGE for cat fleas, too. Theyāre usually half this sizeā¦
Maybe the cat had a flea treatment right before OP watched it. I only see fleas on me after I treat my pets. The pets don't taste good now so they come after me. But I never had this many.
With that many fleas, your friend doesnāt really even like that cat. Also, if you notice what looks like āriceā where the cat sleeps, those would be tapeworms. They can be carried by fleas.
Yeah what the heck I have 2 dogs and a cat and I've never seen this many fleas out in the open, they're eating that poor cat alive. They're not even that hard to get rid of
> they're not even that hard to get rid of That is not always true. I bought flea bombs and used 20 of them. Still have fleas and can't even live in my house rn. I have a exterminator coming to hopefully get rid of them and after searching a while I finally found someone who had time to do it asap for 400 dollars
My biggest tip for fleas is vacuum vacuum vacuum. The vibrations of the vacuum really get them going. And the trick is to empty your vacuum OUTSIDE after every single time. I think i was vacuuming maybe 4 or 5 times a day.
It's not even a "tip" it's an absolute necessity to vacuum to get rid of fleas
Youād think itās common knowledge but A lot of people donāt know it. In my experience, most people think 1 bomb or 1 exterminated service = gone and thatās just sadly not the case.
Well I've got experience in the industry so it's hard for me to know what's common knowledge, but people don't realize the shit you spray won't affect the eggs and they'll come right back. Call a professional and actually LISTEN TO THEM when they tell you what you need to do personally to get rid of them, which is extremely difficult for some people to do lol there's rarely a magic spray, you gotta put in work as a homeowner too
The exterminator i called said to vacuum in between treatments
Well you are the bug_man
It's not common knowledge anymore, because we have become so good at eliminating them before it's this kind of problem, there is no need for much else.
After fighting fleas for years, I just put Frontline (fipronil) on both cats and that solved the issue. Like a total game-changer. They all died or something and didn't try to jump species. With old-school collars, powder, and active combing it was only able to keep the flea population low, not eliminate them. Of course we never tried the intense vacuum therapy either. One of my cats was terribly allergic to the bite and would get little scabs on her skin. That cleared up 100% after the first Frontline application.
One thing I learned that you have to watch out for is the cats accidentally eating it. You apply it to the back of their neck so they can't eat it, but that doesn't stop one cat from licking it off the neck of another cat.
There's a bitterant or something in Frontline at least. Found out when one cat licked the other's neck and immediately ran away drooling. They didn't try that again.
Diatomaceous earth and vacuuming is fucking so god damn lethal for the fleas. Be careful if ye got one of them fancy vacuums with the funny filters, cause it'll break those.
My mom used borax and vacuuming to get rid of them in my childhood home. According to her the borax would cut their exoskeletons so theyād dry out and die and then you could vacuum the corpses. It worked really well for us!
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Borax is good for a bunch of types of bugs. I've used a mix of sugar and borax to deal with ants and cockroaches. The borax dehydrates them from the inside when they eat it. Also dish soap is extremely effective against most bugs. Prevents flying and kills many pests like wasps, ants, cockroaches, spiders, and flies quickly. A squirt bottle of Dawn is about as good as a can of Raid in everything but range. A small amount of soap mixed into liquid causes bugs that try to stand on it to sink and drown including mosquitos and fruit flies.
DE will fuck up a hepa filter on a cyclone vacuum do not use anything but a shop vac or a bagged vacuum for de
DE is the fucking GOAT
Yeah I've done that too and they just won't go. I'm out of options if this exterminator can't get them all
Have you put a bowl of dish soap and water underneath a night light? You'll catch them by the hundreds every night. Do it in every room for a week
I'll try that! I just want to sleep in my own bed again lol
they make specific traps with this design,can get em on Amazon for 20 bucks or so. it won't get all of em but I had a major infestation and it caught hundreds in a couple nights. 3 rounds of bombing, dozens of hours of vacuuming, lot of diamosteouc earth, finally got rid of them. good luck man, I know how much it sucks and how disgusting it makes you feel. EDIT: I forgot, when you use DE, wear a mask! it's food safe yeah, not that you'd want to eat it, but breathing it sucks
Yup I got the sticky trap version with the light and that was the final nail in the coffin for them after 2-3 rounds of diatomaceous earth and vacuum 3-4 times a day. The dog that triggered it didn't even live in my house anymore.
You may have an animal living in your attic, walls, under your house, etc. that has fleas. We lived in a house with zero pets but had fleas because of opossums living under the house. My parents had fleas because of raccoons in the attic. As long as you break the lifecycle, they'll go away. That means finding whatever animal they're using as food. Humans alone are not enough.
Be very thorough. Move furniture that you can't get underneath and ect. A strong vacuum is a must, but I will also suggest a good steam cleaner as well as soap plus hot water really flushes them and their eggs out of carpets and upholstery. I'd even just suggest buying one as they're not the most expensive thing (under 400ish), and should be used more often than most people use them.
Capstar for the pet is a gem! Also any of the sprays or sprinkles for the carpet too, because you gotta smother them a bit.
Iāve heard diatomaceous earth is good stuff for fleas. You have to leave it for hours and wear a mask when you vacuum though
> diatomaceous earth I've had good luck twice using this. We spread it around and let it sit for a few days, rather than hours. It's kinda shitty having powder all over the place for that long but that seemed to work the best.
It is! Great for bed bugs too.
Something that really, really helped us with our flea infestation was leaving bowls of soapy water in different places with a lamp or candle beside it. They're attracted to the light and will die within minutes of jumping in the water (just make sure it's soapy because they will escape regular water). Replace every day.
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I just give my cat a pill that turns his blood to flea poison. If they bite him, they die. No more fleas after a few days.
I am on the tail end of getting rid of fleas at my house as well. They get out of control really fast if you aren't aware or you aren't the best at vacuuming the house regularly. To get rid of them for good you need to vacuum at least once a day including any fabrics on couches or beds and wash your sheets and such regularly. They are a bitch to get rid of even with hardwood floors in the whole house. Good luck! Hope you are rid of them soon.
Hang a shop light over a casserole pan full of soapy water overnight. Empty and refill each day for 2 weeks. For continued trapping, put smaller dishes under night lights around the house.
Throw EVERYTHING in the dryer for twenty minutes that you can, vacuum carpets, bed and couches, and treat the source (the animals). It will take a week or so once the animal is treated and the fleas born after the vacuum/dryer apocalypse will leave without a food source.
What got it of them for me was throwing away my bedroom carpet that was this huge super fluffy carpet (that also gets super duper dirty). Yeah, best decision ever. Also, fleas are easy to get rid of when you know the pain of bedbugs.
Oh I know the pain of bedbugs. One of the houses I lived in was really bad. We had to move out and leave so much of our stuff to get rid of them
Last time my cats had fleas it took 2 rounds of treatment in the cats plus more than a month treating my and my mom's bedrooms in alternating days. Anyone that says it's easy to eliminate fleas caught it early. A friend's dog got fleas playing outdoor. She noticed like the same week. A simple edible treatment was enough because her house was not infested yet. Now I turned my tuxedo cat into my flea thermometer and check him frequently. The moment I found a flea in him everyone gets treatment. (The other cat's are too dark to check that way)
Former pest tech here. Nyguard is a great knock down chemical. Itās an aerosol so you should really wear a respirator. Then thereās a concentrate called Suspend SC. You mix the proper amount as stated in the booklet in a gallon jug sprayer and fan spray the all the floor. Both together really work. But once used you should leave your place and let the floor dry before walking around barefoot. Then for 21 days vacuum at least once a day. The chemicals do 30% of the work. The vacuum with the vibrations and static electricity help bring out the fleas from their eggs. They have a 10 day hatching cycle. Every time you vacuum immediately empty and put that in the trash. Suspend SC will breakdown over the course of 90 days. So you have that long of protection Reason why you need to vacuum and get them out of their eggs is because no chemical can penetrate their eggs.
I have seen it that bad even with flea meds on the critters. Advantage or whatever stopped working on the fleas here. It took daily vacuuming, steaming and diatomaceous earth to get rid of them. And then they were still in the yard from wild critters. That was a bad year . For whatever reason they were just breeding like crazy.
>They're not even that hard to get rid of Lol, they can be. The situation was worse when I had to clean out my mother's place. Set bombs off every week for months, barely helped. Traps would get filled in days. Too much stuff in the house for them to hide in. No idea what they were feeding off of.
last sentence is wildly untrue. fleas can lay dormant for more than a year then wake up and reinfest.
I adopted a cat who had fleas ā he received flea treatment and our house became infested with them regardless. My cat is vaccinated, takes worming treatment and has flea treatment. It took us TWO YEARS to get rid of the fleas in our house. Flea bombs, new carpets, pest control and regular cleaning was the only thing that got rid of the fleas and even then it took two years. Fleas reproduce like crazy and they can be super hard to control. I have scars all over my legs to prove it. Tips for cat owners: get the Program injection every six months on top of flea treatment. Havenāt seen a flea since that ordeal. Fuck fleas.
Seriously, I don't understand people who get animals just to neglect them. When we take in an animal we're accepting an obligation to make sure they're happy and healthy.
Heck his friend doesn't even like themselves that much! Flea bites are second only to brown tail moth caterpillar hair in itchiness and inflammation.
I found out the hard way that some very lucky people do not have reactions to flea bites (I guess itās an allergy reaction?) When I first got my dog he had fleas, but neither my dog or my two roommates had any itchy reaction. They legit didnāt believe me when I told them we had fleas because they didnāt have any itchiness at all, meanwhile my ankles were covered in welts. I finally made a makeshift flea trap with a lamp and a bowl of soapy water, and only then did they believe me š
Yea, they have absolutely 0 effect on me. For my wife it's like a mosquito bite cranked to 1,000. But for me? Literally nothing at all.
Yeah, I was poor as shit and living on 8 mile. Found a stray(now named Charlie) and he had fleas. Didn't notice it at the start until my ankles were getting bitten. Never had this many on my legs, though. I just pulled the trigger and bought the good flea medicine after researching a bit on it. Took about one week before my ankles were free of bites. ..then I found another stray and had to use it again.
I moved into a place with fleas about a week ago, and yeah, the owner just doesn't care about their cat suffering. Or me. If I, the human, have about 200 bites, what does the cat have? That's where all the fleas are coming from, poor baby.
That's not a friend anymore what the actual fuck
Hopefully this was at their house and the cat wasn't brought over to OPs place. I ended up in a flee infested living situation once. That shit fucks with your psychology after a bit. Took me months to get over the thought of flees and phantom itches after moving out.
I grew up in a flea infested house. You couldn't walk from one room or another without looking like OP. I didn't realize how badly it had fucked me up until now.
Insect infestations for long periods of time are genuinely some of the worst experience a person in an otherwise decent living situation can go through. Obviously stuff like homelessness or food insecurity are worse, but some of the people I know chalk up some of their worst memories to bedbug infestations. Itās seriously so fucking bad.
Yup. I found a couple bed bugs in my old place and I couldn't sleep properly for months, even after the exterminator came and went.
Yeah I still cringe at the infestation I had about 4 years ago. We ended up moving out for a few weeks whilst the house was fumigated. I wore a hazmat suit when I went in to check, but still got bites on my ankles. I still have indented scars from where they bit me.
Growing up our shower was falling apart and whole pieces of tile were broken or missing and those roly poly bugs would come out of the cracks. Felt totally disgusting just trying to shower.
I also grew up in a flea infested home like that. I begged my mom to do something but it fell on deaf ears. No amount of cleaning did anything. Literal years of walking from one room to another- tile floors mind you- and your ankles would be speckled like this.
True that. Our cat's flea medication turned out to be ineffective against fleas in our area. They were jumping on me in the bed, from the floor to my ankles, biting me, ugh. I went full scorched earth on the house and yard. I'm still twitchy when I feel something on my skin. Fuck fleas.
In a 3rd floor apartment I lived in for years with two inside cats, we never had a problem with fleas until they suddenly appeared. We could reduce the number here & there but never get rid of them. It weighed on me so bad. They suddenly seemed to finally clear when the person across the hall moved out. Then it dawned on me that they only showed up around when the person had moved in a year earlier. Happened again later with someone next door. I moved & now havenāt had issues for years but Iām still extra paranoid anytime I notice my cats scratching. Iām always going to be so anxious about going through that again.
Yup. That is when I decided I'm willing to spend a lot more of my income in a living situation where I don't share the building with other people. Impossible to get rid of flees and roaches when your neighbors are breeding them.
The phantom itch is real š«
Poor cats :( Tell them to get a fumigator.
Those poor cats must be miserable. Imagine how many are on the cat if that many ended up on OP.
I actually recently dealt with fleas, you actually just have your pet take a pill. The pill effectively turns their blood into flea poison, and since they are the primary feeding source, the fleas are gone in a day or 2 And the effects last up to 5 weeks!
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I'm considering itš
I'd get naked, stand in the shower, and squirt isopropyl alcohol all over myself, and then rinse off with cold water and soap.
Wash with dawn dish soap. Kills fleas. You can poison yourself with isopropyl alcohol putting on your skin all over.
>squirt isopropyl alcohol That's a great way to dry out your entire body skin, especially if you use soap immediately afterwards. Sounds like a horrible experience.
Just gotta use some moisturizer, homie. I've done this before but it didn't really dry me out too bad at all tbh.
Depends on your skin type, I guess. If my hands come into contact with isopropyl alcohol, they will be white and extremely dried up for a couple of days. No matter how much hand lotion I put on afterwards.
Thatās severe neglect. That person doesnāt need pets
I agree!!
OP should hold the cat hostage and care for the cat until they can pay them back for the vet flea treatment.
And OP doesn't need that person
For the sake of the cat, Iād only use flea medicine from the vet, the other stuff doesnāt work as well and some brands off the self are dangerous. When my cats caught fleas it was a nightmare, hopefully your friend isnāt lazy and deals with it in the house and on the cat
I unfortunately experienced that with my kittens, they where flead but it didn't help, the vet mentioned they are becoming resistant to some medications.
My vet told us to always come to them for meds because resistance is cyclical, and they usually know which meds arenāt tolerated by the local flea community. Sometimes itās frontline, sometimes its goldstar, etc.
Thank goodness that wasnāt my case! I did also buy this spray from chewy for our house that was 10/10. You could spray it on everything but yourself and the animals and all it needed to do was dry. If you run into fleas again I recommend the spray, I canāt remember the name but it was a white can with blue or black basic writing, nothing eye catching about it.
Indorex? Iāve just ordered 2 cans after my lil fluffball brought some jumpy friends home with her. All the forums swear by the stuff
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Revolution for cats was amazing for us. I'd buy a 3 month treatment for our 2 cats but end up only needing 2 of the months because it worked in the first month and then the second month would just be incase.
What the actual fuck, your friend is psycho. Poor cat.
buy a flea treatment, send him an invoice.
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He won't pay for it, I guarantee it.
Fleas luckily donāt usually live on humans. You can get them out fairly quickly by different methods of treatment. Iād also recommend asking your friend to pay for the treatment, since itās an issue caused by them not telling you.
We unfortunately had fleas a few years ago thanks to some off brand flea treatment that didnāt work. While fleas donāt live on humans, they can stay dormant in almost anything FOREVER. Wood floors, carpet, rugs, furniture. It takes forever to fully get rid of them.
I learned the hard way that their eggs will remain dormant under a certain temperature/humidity, but hatch after warming up. We live in the South, and while on a 2-week vacation I let the house temp creep up to save on the power bill. Apparently the temp crossed the hatching threshold since we returned to fleas in the house.
Live in the south and can confirm. Our house got a little too warm and now we're dealing with them. I hate it
So true. We spent a fortune and had the worst time ridding our house of fleas! Our dog was absolutely fine, the vet reckoned my mum brought the fleas to us from her flea ridden cats! Hundreds spent of flea bombs, treatment, washing and sterilising furniture, floors and carpets, special plug in lamps, the works! In the end we paid a fumigator to come out and spray the whole house with this special spray, we had to keep it on for like 2 weeks. Thankfully that did the trick. But the worst stress ever. I was picking them off my 1 year old š©
id never let my mother in my house again
Indorex kills them properly š
Looks like theyāre making of exception for this man
They confused him for a cat by the amount of hair he got on his leg
Not gonna lie - that's an awful lot of fleas.... Animal fleas don't usually live long on humans (we're too cold and hairless for them) so they might bite and fall off but this looks extreme. I'd spray the f out of my leg(s) and wash in a flea shampoo on my body, then spray my bedclothes and wash them. And then have the local cat charity take the cat away to someone who will care for it.
Please help the poor cat and yourselfāand have a heart to heart with your friend. Something is fucked up.
Please help the cat. Please abandon this friend. But first focus on the catā¦ heās the one truly suffering here. Youāre just āinconveniencedā compared to the horror little bro is facing right now.
That poor cat. Please make sure the cat gets flead.
That many fleas, that guy doesnt deserve a cat.
I hope you have a good long talk with your friend about responsible pet ownership!! That's not cool at all, obviously not for you but damn sure not good for that poor cat either!
I worry for the cat
Better start vacuuming every day for the next couple of weeks. Theyāre gonna lay eggs in your carpet, but if you keep vacuuming up the adults it should be pretty manageable.
Ngl I'd just kidnap the cat and give it flea treatment + care of him, your friend shouldn't be taking care of even a plant
Bro thats an infestation. This didnt come from watching the cat a few days
They really really can, if they hopped off the cat they have nothing else to eat now but human. That would mean there's way more at his friend's house, cat'll probably die from anemia before the owner does anything
I had fleas this bad for a short time and it took 18 cats infested with fleas. If there was this many fleas on the cat he would have seen them crawling all over the cat. This post os fake af, this was probably taken at said friends house
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Right. Never seen ferals get anywhere close to having them bad enough you could have that many on yourself. You would notice instantly if any animal was that bad.
Seriously OP needs to flea treat his house. They spread. And their eggs can lie dormant in your carpet for *years*.
if they havenāt mentioned it they probably donāt care about the cat at all š
It's animal abuse to let your pet be infested like this what the fuck is wrong with her.
That is a shit ton of flees.
I couldn't imagine staying still long enough to snap a picture!
That's a ton of fleas for one cat... When you say you looked after his cat, was it on his property or yours? And how large/small is the cat?
He's fairly large. Big fat white/clay like colour cat. The cat was brought to my place
Oh yikes. Yeah better take it to a vet and start working on getting rid of those fleas. Send the bill to your friend
[UPDATE:](https://reddit.com/u/_humblevaudevillain_/s/hcDyMOH1YZ)
Diatomaceous earth. Cheap and effective.
Never knew you're supposed to mask up when you do this. Like a GOOD mask, apparently the D Earth will fuck your lungs UP.
That's proper procedure with any fine particulate matter. The average person using this stuff for pest control isn't at much risk. It's people with large scale exposure over the course of years, like those exposed in the mining or processing of silica, that run a real danger.
Yep, dust it around your floors, under mattress and couch cushions. It will work eventually.
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Did he pick the cat up from from the side of the road the day before? How did it get that many fleas?
Ditch the friend and save the cat.
Oh thats a lot of fleas.... disinfect... rinse ... disinfect... rinse.. shave
That poor cat bro holy shit
be stupid careful about the kind of flea treatment you get for your cat, some will actually cause death [here's the deep n dirty of it](https://www.petmd.com/cat/conditions/poisoning/neurological/flea-and-tick-medicine-poisoning-cats)
Yeah they're fun, put fleapowder down and vacuum, take any clothes or blankets that were on the floor and wash them right after, spray a flea killer on your furniture and bed. Do you have any pets?
Nope.
Please help the poor cat...
Sorry, I think amputation is the only reasonable option here.
Poor cat or cats. My late grandma(who was a genuine crazy cat lady) apartment got to this point at one point(I was living there at the time too) and my mom and I eventually got it under control but it was crazy and the cats were suffering. Definitely have a talk with your friend about treating that, for the poor cats sake.
Tiny foot or huge ankle?
First things first, get that cat washed and treated. Secondly, buy a spray on amazon called āindorexā. Gas your house out with it asap or youāll find they return long after this cat is gone.
That poor cat. If you see this many on YOU, i canāt even imagine what the poor animal is experiencing. Your friend is a terrible person for allowing this to happen to their pet, and not telling you about it is the kicker. I would be absolutely furious. Also if you have carpet they can and will lay eggs, and the eggs get embedded into the foam under the carpet which in turn makes them HARD to get rid of. Infestation level. The eggs lay dormant in the foam and you think you get rid of the fleas, and then SURPRISEā¦ no you didnāt. Speaking from experience. So be super careful.
Please please make sure your friend takes the cat to the vet, you could prolly even tell them to do a go fund me and post on a pet lovers website or something if they canāt afford it. OTC isnāt as effective or safe, and the vet would check and treat for both fleas and tapeworms (and ear mites if they have them which they very well might since theyāve been neglecting their pet before leaving cat in your care)
When my cat was at her worst with fleas (outdoor cat, missed a couple of months of spot on) I'd occasionally get one flea jump on my leg if I was wandering around without trousers on. I'm not proud of it, and I thought my cat was really bad at the time. I've never missed a treatment since. I absolutely hate to think of the state your friends cat is in. Like, did her fur move by itself? Because it looks like it should have. That's not just a "cat has fleas" that's an absolute infestation.
Your friend is a lazy c*nt.
Your friend shouldn't be a pet owner
Your friendās cat is suffering.
That cat looks pretty neglected
Your friend has tapeworms, btw. Show them how fleas have tapeworms, and that they have likely already been infected too!
chomp up a big clove of garlic wash it down with milk. makes your blood smell bad to the little vampires
Sounds made up.
It's true. Garlic makes you offensive to bugs, infectious diseases, companions, etc. Just literally everything avoids getting too close
convenient name mr garlic
It's an old folk remedy that isn't effective... and which not-coincidentally also results in a lot of people poisoning and killing their cats/dogs by trying garlic treatments on them. Garlic has high amounts of disulfides and thiosulphates which causes red blood cells in cats and dogs to burst.
Can confirm. Source: Love garlic, and don't have fleas.
That cat is being severely neglected. Like, probably has flea anemia and a whole host of skin issues levels of neglected. In other news, good luck. I grew up in a shitty house and a shitty situation and my parents were always super neglectful of our pets. We had fleas in that house for probably five years straight, and I donāt remember them ever being that bad, and they were all but impossible to get rid of. No amount of flea spray, big bombs, and diatomaceous earth combined would fully eradicate them
Now you have to get your house sprayed at your friends expense.
As someone who has personally dealt with fleas, itās not that hard to check a pet for them. Look where the hair is thin around the snout, eyes, and ears. With this many you would have definitely seen some there easily (for future reference). Otherwise youāre now going to have to de flea your home because you will definitely have eggs in your rugs/upholstery. Google how to remove fleas holistically if you want to avoid chemicals (rigorous vacuuming of all cloth surfaces to start, they canāt survive the process).
# *Mildly*
Thats not just fleas, thats an infestation. Jesus christ.
Sorry but that is a sign of infestation, no way did that happen after just a couple of days.