Home › Flea Control › Why Most of the Fleas Are Not on Your Pet
Flea control
Why Most of the Fleas Are Not on Your Pet
You can treat the animal perfectly and still have a flea problem. Here is why that is not a contradiction.
The visible minority
When somebody finds fleas on a cat or a dog, the natural conclusion is that the fleas are on the cat or the dog. It is the wrong shape of the problem, and almost every failed flea treatment starts there.
The adults on the animal are the only stage you can see, and they are a small fraction of the population. The rest — eggs, larvae and cocoons — is distributed through the floor coverings and the soft furnishings of every room the animal uses, and it is invisible.
Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.
Why treating the pet alone always disappoints
Treat the animal and the adults on it die. Good. Meanwhile the eggs that fell off it last week are hatching, the larvae are feeding in the carpet edge, and the cocoons are waiting for somebody to walk past.
Over the following days and weeks those emerge, find the animal, get killed by its treatment — and in the gap before they die, a proportion of them feed and lay. The household ends up in a slow equilibrium: never overwhelmed, never clear, and the owner concludes the pet treatment is not working when it is doing exactly what it is meant to.
The animal's treatment is your vet's business, not ours, and it should stay in place. What it cannot do is reach into the carpet.
Why treating the house alone fails too
The mirror image. Treat the property thoroughly and leave the animal untreated, and within days it has picked up new adults from wherever it goes — the garden, a walk, another household — and is laying fresh eggs into a carpet whose treatment is already ageing.
Neither half works on its own. Both, close together, is the version that ends it.
What to do about it
Ring your vet and ask what they recommend for your animal, and tell them the property is being treated so the timing lines up. Do not take the pet's treatment advice from a pet shop, a supermarket shelf or a pest controller: some products sold for dogs are genuinely dangerous to cats, and that is a conversation for somebody qualified to have it.
Then get the property treated, concentrating on wherever the animal actually spends its time. When you ring us, describe its day rather than where you have seen a flea — the two are different, and the first one is the useful one.
Before you book
Quick Answers
Is there a figure for how many fleas are in the carpet?
Entomologists put the great majority of a household population in the immature stages - eggs, larvae and cocoons - rather than as adults on the animal. The exact split varies with the stage of the infestation, but the direction never does: what you can see is the minority.
Should I stop the pet’s treatment while the house is treated?
No, and do not change it without asking your vet. The two are meant to run together. Tell your vet the property is being treated so they can advise on timing.
Tell Us About the Pets and the Rooms
Whether there are pets and what they are on, which rooms are affected, and how long it has been going on.
Get in touch
Book a Flea Treatment
Tell us whether there are pets in the property and what they are on, which rooms are affected, and how long it has been going on. If the property is empty between tenants, say so — that is a different treatment.
- Phone
- 01908 465226
- Message us on WhatsApp
- sales@miltonkeynespestcontroller.co.uk
- Milton Keynes Pest Controller Service
- Address
- South Row
Milton Keynes
MK9 3DQ - Covering
- Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and parts of Hertfordshire