Michael Flea Combing (not himself)

How to flea comb your cat using a 32 teeth to the inch flea comb. Perhaps it should read “How I flea comb…”

This is an archived video snippet that I bumped into onto my computer, today. It was made about 3 years ago when Binnie was alive and about 18 years of age. It is not a complete video but still has some use. I would normally add some more footage and some text perhaps. However, I think it is quite nice in this raw state. Binnie, my lady cat companion, was her nice, tubby self at the time.

I made the video as an attempt to explain how flea combing could be done. I am not saying this is the only way. What I can say with certainty is that people should routinely flea comb their cat if only to check that (s)he has no fleas.

Even if you don’t find a flea in the usual places around the chest, chin, ears, neck and shoulders (all at the front end), it is important to check the area that is just above the base of the tail – where the tail starts. This is where you’ll find flea feces, small black bits. This is the area vets flea comb in my experience when checking a cat for fleas.

Binnie had a dense double coat. Another reason for regular flea combing a cat with such a coat is to make it easier to do it. If you leave it for a couple of days it is much more difficult to pass the fine comb through the undercoat.

You’ll see her have a gentle swipe at me at the end! This is fine and I actually found it very cute. She was a little bit grumpy in her old age and probably wasn’t in the best of moods to be flea combed. I loved her to bits.

Click this link to see a list of posts on the dreaded cat flea.

How do you flea comb your cat? Tell me, please…. 😉

THIS PAGE HAS BEEN BUMPED UP FROM APRIL 2013. YES, 6 YEARS AGO. IT BRINGS BACK NICE MEMORIES.

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Comments

Michael Flea Combing (not himself) — 11 Comments

Rose on April 24, 2013 at 11:08 am said:
lol you are so funny Micheal :0
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Rose on April 24, 2013 at 10:38 am said:
OMG Micheal I had to laugh at you flea combing in your BED.It’s a good job Binnie didn’t have fleas or you’d have got some nasty bites if any dropped off and survived until your bedtime.
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- Michael on April 24, 2013 at 10:45 am said:
  Oh Yes….I have had the odd flea bite 😉 I did tend to flea comb her on the bed. But I always caught them 😉 LOL I am a demon flea catcher. I would nearly always kill them on the comb. If, on rare occasions, a flea escaped to the bed. I’d catch it and crush it between finger and thumb… I was deadly.
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Marc on April 22, 2013 at 6:12 pm said:
Did Binnie give you a high five at the end of was that a ‘I’ve finished acting for today’? She seems to have been a lovely cat. I like black and white cats 🙂 Great video – you make it look easy. I am just getting my 3 used to being brushed. Not even there with that yet so flea combing will have to be the next step.
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- Michael on April 22, 2013 at 6:47 pm said:
  ‘I’ve finished acting for today’?
  LOL. It was definitely this. She had a little swipe at me. It is sort of natural for a cat. Actually that was very unusual for her. I’m fine with it though. I probably messed with her for too long. She was a bit of a prima donna. It had to be the first and only take 😉
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Ruth (Monty's Mom) on April 22, 2013 at 2:04 pm said:
Monty has a single coat. Mittens looked a lot like Binnie. She had a heavy double coat. So that may also have been a factor.
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- Michael on April 22, 2013 at 3:52 pm said:
  I sort of guessed he had a single coat. That is a factor for being flea free.
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Ruth (Monty's Mom) on April 22, 2013 at 2:03 pm said:
I think the type of soil plays a role as well as temperature. It’s actually a bit colder where Mittens lived than where Monty lives. We don’t get double digits below zero (Fahrenheit) as much here near Lake Michigan. Up north (it’s really more west) it can be bitterly cold since the lake isn’t there to moderate the climate.
The soil in Reedsburg was still on the sandy side, but I remember hard packed black dirt while hiking around the Reedsburg bluffs. Where Mittens lived was all loose packed sandy soil, large granules, much like Wisconsin River sand. That farm may even have been somewhat close to the river, I’d have to look on a map. I don’t know why I notice dirt so much.
My theory is that the fleas could burrow down farther into the loose sandy soil giving protection from extremes of climate whereas the harder packed earth would be less yielding, keeping them more toward the surface. I don’t know enough about the life cycle of your average flea to know if this makes sense or if it was all coincidence that bigger fleas were found in a cat living in sandy conditions.
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- Michael on April 22, 2013 at 4:53 pm said:
  Your theory about the soil quality rings true although I have not read anything about that. There is probably little on that subject.
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Ruth (Monty's Mom) on April 22, 2013 at 12:37 pm said:
Great video, Michael. You explain that better than Monty’s vet. I have a flea comb and check him now and then and whenever I’m at the vet I have them check him. We have never found a flea on him! Maybe it depends on where you live. Mittens came to us covered in huge black fleas. We’d never seen anything like them. After that she never had a problem again, but she loved baths, so maybe the baths were helpful in that regard. I’ve heard that you don’t really need to use harsh chemicals or medications, but that a simple bath with ordinary detergent will get rid of the fleas if your cat is infested. I think I saw that in a video about how to care for ferals. They were bathing flea infested kittens with ordinary soap, not a special flea killing soap. As the fleas ran for the kitten’s face they would grab them and crush them. We used a flea dip with Mutsy, and I remember the fleas running toward her face and my mom grabbing them off her and crushing them. The place we adopted Mittens from was a farm located on very sandy soil (common in that part of Wisconsin) but here the soil is more dark dirt or even clay. I wonder if that makes a difference for what types of fleas are out there. Our cats from Grandma’s farm in Reedsburg had fleas but little ones. Muttonhead came from a farm on Highway 13 north of Wisconsin Dells. I loved Tippy so much and all Grandma’s cats looked sort of like her. So I got Mittens from a friend because they had a whole litter of black and white cats. I’d never had a black cat, so it seemed a good thing that she didn’t look like Tippy. I expected her to be different, but I was surprised her fleas were so different. They were really huge and scary looking.
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- Michael on April 22, 2013 at 1:01 pm said:
  Thanks. I have to say I think you are lucky regarding cat fleas. As you say it may be to do with the location and climate. You seem to have cold winders. Perhaps they keep them at bay. England is more damp and wet rather than very cold.
  I am sure that further south in the US and in warm climates the cat flea is very common and can be a real problem mainly because the flea bite can set up an allergic reaction, which is bad news.
  So pleased that no fleas have been seen on Monty. Lucky boy. He is blessed. Another factor may be the single coat. I don’t know but he may have a single coat. Fleas prefer dense, warm coats with plenty of down fur.
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