I have three cats, one at four years old, one at three years old and another at one year old.

We discovered in October that they had fleas, pretty bad. We really do not have a lot of money to spare. We have spent a lot of money (well a lot of money for us) already and I just cannot afford to spend any more.

I bought all sorts of flea treatments for the cats and the home - Flea collars, spot on, flea foggers etc etc, I must've spent about £100 over a course of a few weeks. We tried everything to get rid of the fleas but we just can't shift them. We have been quoted anything from £100 - £300 for professional exterminators to come in.

We have not took them to the vets because we just do not have the money. They still have the fleas and now they have developed worms (I am pretty sure) because they have not been eating properly for the last few weeks.

I'm at my witzend, I know the advise is going to be you need to take them to the vets, but how can we if we have no money to pay for it? I even tried claiming on my pet insurance but they wouldn't pay out.

Any advise would be appreciated, I'm desperate.

You realy are better off getting frontline or similar from the vets or online Bestpet Pharmacy - supermarket stuff is just a waste of money imop. You can also get stuff that does work from the vets to, they may do a payment plan so you can spread the cost

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All my children have paws!

Buy advantage for fleas from the net and drontal for worms - Advantage for Small Cats, Dogs, and Rabbits - 4 pipettes : MedicAnimal.com this is your fleas - @£10.90 will treat your 3 cats and then this for the worms Drontal Worming Tablet for Cats : MedicAnimal.com @£1.60 a cat so total you will spend is £15.70. That's got to be a goer. If you need to eat just baked beans this week then that's what you do as withholding treatment from an animal is illegal and you could face a very heavy fine if you were found out. Ring the council for pest control and they should be able to help with the costs of rentokil.

The fleas collars and spot on s you get from the supermarkets etc are rubbish and don't work and are a complete waste of money.

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please look at my website - www.finesthourcats.webs.com - for gorgeous GCCF registered RagaMuffins and Selkirk Rex

jdog1873, you have had some great advice from DB and Spid on how to start controlling your fleas cost-effectively. Another tip though. Take the flea collar off your cats and start cutting it up and put bits in your hoover bag; kills any fleas that are hoovered up in the bag rather than providing a nice place for them to live.

I am just going to come out now and say it but if you are struggling with the cost of flea treatment, what are you going to do when they fall ill? Worst case scenario all three get a bad bug at the same time and need to see the vet urgently. I don't mean to be rude or to pry into your financial circumstances, and I know you say that you have pet insurance, which is very commendable, but unless you are very lucky, there is still an excess to pay, which can be anything up to £80. Do you have things in place to be able to cover that?

Good advice in the other posts, you do need to get this sorted before your cats become ill.

For the fleas? Have you tried a spray for the house & your furnishings? When you spray the carpets make sure you go right to the edges, you need to do this regularly & make sure you hoover every day. Wash any bedding/sofa covers/cushions/ etc regularly at a hot temperature.

It can take a while to break the cycle, we had a bad case last year & it wasn't something that disappeared over night.

Just make sure though that you are not giving the cats too many doses of different flea treatments as this could make them ill

Great advice already but I thought I'd add that we had a really bad flea infestation a couple of years ago and got in touch with the local borough council and they charged us £45 for a 3 bed house. You don't need to be living in a council hous (we don't) but we thought this was really cheap! It did work though. Those pesky fleas are a bugger to get rid of. We used to squish them with cellotape then have a competition to see who had the most dead fleas.

Since then and since we have new cats *touch wood* we have been fine. Its much better to take preventative measures like use frontline regularly from the start and not just wait until you see a live flea because then you know that that one little blighter has laid eggs all round the home

Something you could do right now would be to get a pair of tweezers and go through your cats fur and crush the blighters. Just remember not to pull the fur out. Then use a flea comb, one of those plastic ones with combs on either side.

It might give your cats some relief until the meds arrive.

Another one fled the forum - posted the message last night and not been on since! Another troll methinks. I'm going to stop answering first posts I think.

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please look at my website - www.finesthourcats.webs.com - for gorgeous GCCF registered RagaMuffins and Selkirk Rex

Either that or didnt get the response/replies they wanted No great loss

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I know what you mean. I hardly bother posting on first posts now. I do wonder though whether some peeps just don't check back because they don't expect quick replies (well, not that this forum is terribly fast-moving or terribly exciting at the moment but I think you know what I mean). Or they also post on other forums and like their responses better