Okay, we're going insane here with fleas and my son looks like he has chicken pox around his ankles, he keeps scratching his bites till they bleed 
I've read some of the other threads about fleas but I'm left just as befuddled as before, if not more so.
We never used to get fleas like this. We moved into this house two years ago. The first summer, didn't see a flea, just like in our previous house. The next summer, suddenly we had fleas. One of our cats turned out to also be allergic... he was losing hair and getting all scabby. That's the "proof" that we'd never had fleas before, he'd never been like that before.
So after trying bathing and combing (which had always seemed to be sufficient from what I recall when I was growing up), we resorted to going to the vet and we got Advantage and started vacuuming every day.
That seemed to do the trick. Each cat got a second dose of Advantage a month later, and within a few weeks we weren't seeing fleas at all anymore. We forgot about the problem entirely!
Until this spring, when they came back, of course. This time, we went straight for the Advantage, but it seems to be too little, too late. I actually still see the occasional bug on the kitties, even.
We vaccuum the whole house every day, including the furniture. The trouble is, we can't figure out where the fleas are actually incubating. Our cats have been sleeping in bookshelves and on windowsills, all kinds of strange places we can't get in to vacuum.
But what's really weird, is that some of the worst rooms are the least 'typical' flea-incubators... the KITCHEN, which is 100% hardwood. The BATHROOM, for crying out loud. The bathroom is just rife with the beasts. Where the heck are they hiding in the bathroom? It's not the mat (been washed and bleached and even when removed entirely, the bugs were still there).
Do we need to wash all the comforters from all the beds every day? Every week? What if they're in the mattresses? My son gets bitten in bed, right after we've put on fresh-laundered sheets. Where the heck are they hiding? The throw cushions? How do we deal with that? ???
I really, really, really don't want to slather the house in poison. I spend so much effort keeping that out of our home. I'd almost rather live with the bugs than the poison. Almost. Until I see my son's legs. And my hubby, he seems to take the infestation as a personal insult, as a failure of hygiene, as a sign that we're terrible housekeepers and our home is an insect-ridden pigsty.
Then I read in other threads about having to spread poison all over OUTSIDE as well??? What about my organic veggies? My delicate flower beds? All the good bugs that I try so carefully to promote? Not to mention all the environmental issues of getting into the watertable (we're on a well to boot), into the food chain, etc. I don't want to be looking back 20 years later being the one saying "we didn't realize we were killing all the fish, we just wanted to get of the fleas", sort of like what happened with DDT and thalidymide...
But good grief, this is ridiculous.
I need someone to walk me through, STEP BY STEP, exactly what we need to do to manage this.
I've read some of the other threads about fleas but I'm left just as befuddled as before, if not more so.
We never used to get fleas like this. We moved into this house two years ago. The first summer, didn't see a flea, just like in our previous house. The next summer, suddenly we had fleas. One of our cats turned out to also be allergic... he was losing hair and getting all scabby. That's the "proof" that we'd never had fleas before, he'd never been like that before.
So after trying bathing and combing (which had always seemed to be sufficient from what I recall when I was growing up), we resorted to going to the vet and we got Advantage and started vacuuming every day.
That seemed to do the trick. Each cat got a second dose of Advantage a month later, and within a few weeks we weren't seeing fleas at all anymore. We forgot about the problem entirely!
Until this spring, when they came back, of course. This time, we went straight for the Advantage, but it seems to be too little, too late. I actually still see the occasional bug on the kitties, even.
We vaccuum the whole house every day, including the furniture. The trouble is, we can't figure out where the fleas are actually incubating. Our cats have been sleeping in bookshelves and on windowsills, all kinds of strange places we can't get in to vacuum.
But what's really weird, is that some of the worst rooms are the least 'typical' flea-incubators... the KITCHEN, which is 100% hardwood. The BATHROOM, for crying out loud. The bathroom is just rife with the beasts. Where the heck are they hiding in the bathroom? It's not the mat (been washed and bleached and even when removed entirely, the bugs were still there).
Do we need to wash all the comforters from all the beds every day? Every week? What if they're in the mattresses? My son gets bitten in bed, right after we've put on fresh-laundered sheets. Where the heck are they hiding? The throw cushions? How do we deal with that? ???
I really, really, really don't want to slather the house in poison. I spend so much effort keeping that out of our home. I'd almost rather live with the bugs than the poison. Almost. Until I see my son's legs. And my hubby, he seems to take the infestation as a personal insult, as a failure of hygiene, as a sign that we're terrible housekeepers and our home is an insect-ridden pigsty.
Then I read in other threads about having to spread poison all over OUTSIDE as well??? What about my organic veggies? My delicate flower beds? All the good bugs that I try so carefully to promote? Not to mention all the environmental issues of getting into the watertable (we're on a well to boot), into the food chain, etc. I don't want to be looking back 20 years later being the one saying "we didn't realize we were killing all the fish, we just wanted to get of the fleas", sort of like what happened with DDT and thalidymide...
But good grief, this is ridiculous.
I need someone to walk me through, STEP BY STEP, exactly what we need to do to manage this.
