anyone walk their cats or have indoor/outdoor cats in an area that has a flea problem?
hi! my kitty got fleas about 6 months ago. i successfully got rid of them, and we also moved on top of that and replaced pretty much everything made of fabric. he’s been on meds since, but i missed a couple months of giving meds when he wasn’t going outside at all.
recently i had to take him out of the house, and i did his flea meds about 4 days before. when going back inside, i walked him a little around the neighborhood bc i saw someone else doing that and he always wants to go outside. i was hoping to make this a regular thing for his own enjoyment but now i’m hesitant. i live in an area that has fleas pretty bad bc it’s swampy. i was/am concerned because i know that his flea meds don’t prevent them from going on the cat, just kill the fleas after. i know the meds are effective on him because of last time, but im paranoid i didn’t apply it well enough or something. ive found two fleas and seen him itch just a little. one was crawling my head 😀, we were napping and my head was touching him. i just found another in the same spot we were laying about 10 hours later, but it seemed like it could have been dying? it tried to do a hop but didn’t go anywhere- just hopped in place. i vacuumed it up and the whole couch and surrounding area, and im washing all the blankets etc.
i guess i just wanna know a few things-
what constitutes thorough enough application of the medicine? i put him in a lamb outfit later that night and could smell some of the flea meds on it and got worried i wiped some of it off, but it had been like an hour since i applied. i was pretty good about getting it on the skin.
and is it okay that i skipped a couple months before that?
also, do people who walk their cats experience this regularly? do they just deal with the fleas coming in on the cat and then dying? or should i not be finding live fleas and be concerned? again, im in an area that gets them pretty bad just for reference. i say this because i asked my mom about our cat who was both indoor/outdoor and she said she never saw a flea.
lastly, is the fact that i found the flea in the same spot and not hopping/hopping away effectively a good sign?