fleas

Entre le chat et son maître, il n’y a que le saut d’une puce

~ iamthesunking ~ 5 Comments

662F11CD-B9E0-4B4F-BF02-343413195030Cat Daddy: “Why don’t you give Louis his flea treatment now?”

Me: “He’s moving around too much. It’ll be easier if I pounce when he’s asleep and unsuspecting.”

Cat Daddy: “Just hold him down.”

Me: “Trust me, he’ll holler and kick and the treatment will go all over me instead of on him.”

Cat Daddy, sighing and doing that “Oh, for crying out loud” face: “Give it to me. I’ll do it.”

Me: “Fine. But you’ll be sorry.”

He was. But at least he will be free of fleas for a month. 

Pity the same can’t be said of Louis Catorze. 

Les caresses de chat donnent des puces

~ iamthesunking ~ 5 Comments

C584A943-212A-47E7-9B98-81566F8D670CMy plan to make Louis Catorze a zero-waste kitty has reached an obstacle: spot-on flea treatment. Not only is the market fairly limited in terms of products – with some well known to be utterly useless – but not a single one is plastic-free. So it won’t be quite as simple as swapping brands, as we did with the little sod’s food. 

Louis Catorze uses Broadline, which has the added benefit of also treating worms and therefore absolving us of the Greco-Roman death-wrestle when we try to get a worming pill into him. Each little vial comes individually wrapped in a plastic tray with a peel-off film cover. Whilst I can see why vets and pet shops would want such packaging for sterility, I wrote to the manufacturer to ask if there may be another option for at-home users.

The response – which, unbelievably, came from a lovely customer services lady named Cat – was that the packaging was needed to keep the product stable and to comply with some fancy-sounding European safety law. 

(When I told others about Cat, very worryingly a couple of friends told me that the name must just be a coincidence, as if I genuinely thought the company might only recruit people with animal names or, worse, that I thought they had an actual cat managing their customer service enquiries.)

I wrote back to Broadline Cat and asked if they were doing anything to find an alternative to plastic. I understood about the product stability – after all, we wouldn’t want rancid chemicals to cause Catorze to mutate and turn into the scary Monsieur Hyde version of himself – but, given the ticking time bomb that is single-use plastic, I hoped that there might be another way. (Cat Daddy remarked that Catorze already IS the scary, mutant Monsieur Hyde version, and that a cocktail of putrid chemicals couldn’t possibly make things worse in that respect.)

Broadline Cat replied as follows: 

“Please rest assured that Boehringer Ingelheim continuously look to make improvements where possible to improve our environmental impact. Whilst there is nothing more we can share currently on this particular area, we will ensure to raise this with global manufacturing and supply chain colleagues working on our environmental programmes.”

I don’t know what the solution is for packaging spot-on flea treatment. But I hope Broadline Cat will be true to her word and that they will continue to look for one. 

Le Syndrome de Münchhausen

~ iamthesunking ~ 8 Comments

Cat Daddy and I had lots to do yesterday, with an event going on in our town and the pair of us having offered to help. So, naturellement, Louis Catorze thought this would be a good time to get a mysterious, tick-like foreign body attached to la personne royale. 

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Whatever it was was stuck fast to him and wouldn’t budge, despite his efforts to groom it off and my efforts to restrain him (you can guess how THAT went) and pick it off. Eventually I managed to sneak a couple of photos whilst he slept and I e-mailed them to the vet, who asked me to bring in the little sod just to be sure. Cat Daddy, having wound himself up at the thought of Catorze contracting Lyme disease (no idea what this is) and passing it onto us (no idea if this is even possible), agreed. 

Whilst he shopped for the things we needed for the town event, I took the screaming bag of fur to the vet. And, oh my goodness: the screaming on the journey was off the scale, with each note held for longer than the last and my eardrums throbbing and bleeding by the time we got there.

After all that, the vet told me that it was not a tick but some sort of clingy crud stuck to Catorze’s fur. And he was able to pick it off in a few seconds, with Catorze being noisy but relatively compliant throughout (whereas he had screamed and fought like an exorcism gone badly wrong when I had tried to just LOOK). The vet very kindly didn’t charge me for the consultation, obviously realising that the embarrassment was quite enough without me having to also lose money, and I skulked home, red-faced and ashamed. This time, c’était le silence total from the once-screaming bag of fur. 

So, to conclude: 

  1. Louis Catorze has neither ticks nor Lyme disease
  2. Somehow *I* have come out of this looking like the time-wasting, over-reactive cat freak, despite Cat Daddy being the one who started the whole Lyme disease thing
  3. I have a new “I can never face the vet again” story to add to my already-extensive list 

Cat Daddy: “I KNEW it wasn’t a tick. And, besides, Lyme disease attacks the brain, so Louis would have been pretty safe.”

La princesse irlandaise

~ iamthesunking ~ 6 Comments

We returned from our holiday a few days ago to a still-standing Château and – thanks to the love and care of our French friend and Oscar the dog’s folks – a shiny, shouty Louis Catorze. It seems that he was a very good boy during our absence. Apart from an intermittent cramp/limping scare, which will need further investigation, and an uninvited wander into Dog Daddy’s man-cave – clearly if Boys’ Club cannot come to Catorze, then Catorze will seek out Boys’ Club – the two weeks passed without major incident.

Cat ladies are never off duty, not even when they are on holiday, and no holiday would be complete without a (potential) cat intervention. Meet Bri:

Her name sounds like the cheese but, in fact, we named her after Brigid, Ireland’s patron goddess. This sweet, ageless girl, with a meow like a squeaky bicycle wheel, was our companion during our 3 days at the eco-glampsite in County Mayo. I say “ageless” because she was very kittenish in size and demeanour, yet something tells me that such fur colouring – an all-black head with a mottled body – comes from black fur that has changed over time, rather than being true tortoiseshell.

After ascertaining that Bri didn’t have a family – our nearest neighbours were all farming people who tend to see stray cats as vermin – I contacted a local rescue and sent them a picture of her. Sadly we weren’t able to find a suitable transportation pod, catch her and deliver her to the rescue’s designated vet, all within limited bank holiday opening times, but plans are now in place for the rescue to set a trap soon. I have given them the contact details of the site owner and recommended the best place for laying the trap, and I hope beyond hope that we have good news soon.

I wish we could have done more for Bri during our stay, but one thing that I am really, really glad we did was to give her a spot-on flea treatment. (I am not in the habit of carrying flea treatment in my handbag, as my crazy catness has not quite elevated to such a level as yet, but I was lucky enough to find some in the one shop that was open on a bank holiday Sunday.) Dear little Bri sat perfectly still for me and purred all the way through, as if knowing I meant well – and, yes, I am aware of the irony of a feral cat behaving impeccably for flea treatment when my own little sod first tries to kill me, then rolls the liquid off onto all our soft furnishings and clean laundry. Minutes later, a visible cloud of fleas rose from her body, which was satisfying and horrifying in equal measure. Hopefully they will stay away and give her some relief.

I have been asked a few times whether we would have brought Bri back home with us. Believe me, we wanted to – although Cat Daddy’s condition was that we took her instead of Catorze, not as well as – but it’s not quite as simple as, “See a stray cat, put it in your bag and go home.” Cat Daddy and I tend to regard cats in the same way that we regard fruit and vegetables: best sourced locally. I have mixed feelings about subjecting Bri to a long journey to London when there must be plenty of people in Ireland who would be thrilled to have her. Also, I am not convinced that she would have made a good urban cat: as well as having zero fear of cars – she happily rolled around under ours, even with the engine running – she seemed very content in a rural environment. I think she needs somewhere just like her current place but with a regular person feeding, flea-treating and worming her and not leaving her to the mercy of the elements during the low season.

Nothing would give me more joy than to post here in a few weeks’ time, announcing that Bri has a new home. In the meantime, if you would like to help other cats like her, please support Mayo Animal Welfare, who have quite a task on their hands in terms of changing attitudes to neutering, microchipping and suchlike. You can donate to them here:

https://fundrazr.com/euyT0?fb_ref=share__c5K3Zd

 

Rouler par terre

~ iamthesunking ~ 5 Comments

I often read about other cats and their humans’ struggle to administer the flea medication, and I am usually lucky with my boy because he’s too daft to see it coming.

However, Louis Catorze has found a breathtakingly annoying way of getting his own back: once he’s been splurged with the stinky, sticky fluid, he races upstairs and rolls it off onto our clothes and/or sheets.

If we shut all internal doors, and if it’s dry outside, he races outside and rolls it off onto our patio. The rolling not only smears our patio with ugly, oily marks, but the dirt sticks to his damp fur … and then he pitter-patters back indoors and rolls off the revolting grease-dirt combo onto our clothes and/or sheets.

This picture sums up both the horror of it all and the ambivalence of the little sod.

image

And, sadly, short of putting him in a box for 24 hours following his treatment, I see no solution to the problem. How do you deal with your furry overlords and flea treatment? Right now I’m quite envious of anyone whose cat flees to an unknown outdoor location and remains there until dusk (by which time the fur is dry).

Les puces

~ iamthesunking ~ 1 Comment

This is my 100th blog post! I’m quite astounded that an ordinary black cat who doesn’t do much has inspired me to write 100 times (and Cat Daddy says he is, too). To mark this auspicious event, what better subject matter than … flea treatment. Quel charme!

“Flea treatment?” said Cat Daddy, looking perplexed. “FLEA TREATMENT? As it’s your 100th post, shouldn’t you write about something … you know … a bit nicer?”

“Such as what?”

“Well, what has Louis done this week? Anything interesting or new?”

Silence, then tumbleweed, then crickets. So flea treatment it is.

If you’ve been following Le Blog since the beginning, you will know about Louis Catorze and tablets. Yes, I know. So you can imagine my joy when some clever person invented Broadline, an anti-worm and anti-flea combo-solution in liquid form that can be dropped onto the back of the neck and that negates the need for worming pills.

Catorze is pretty good with dropper-style flea treatment, due to being so thick that he has no idea it’s happening, even mid-splurge. Occasionally he gives me the look as if to say, “Erm, excuse-moi … did you just …?” but then reverts to, “Nah, never mind.”

The first thing that struck me about the Broadline was the size of the applicator: it’s like a snooker cue. There is zéro chance of hiding it in one hand and discreetly sidling up to Catorze, as I was able to do with the teeny tiny Advocate tube; he’s thick, but he’s not blind (although we did once have to get the vet to confirm, as we were genuinely unsure).

And, whilst the quantity of liquid claimed to be just 0.9ml, it looked like rather a lot. Oh dear.

Application time came and, as expected, Louis Catorze noticed and wasn’t hugely pleased. But he didn’t run and hide: in fact, he came into the living room and snuggled us both afterwards.

Here he is, with that telltale neck smear:

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Someone suggested recently that perhaps Louis Catorze was FINALLY coming around to the fact that we do all these things to try to help him. I really hope this is true – although I suspect that he was actually trying to rub the Broadline off onto us.