Tiny Acrobats

Hello I’m a Cat Flea and this is my story.

It all started one day after my Mom and all her flea friends had just finished a nice warm blood meal on the dog — yes I said the dog — because we Cat Fleas do not care where we get our blood from. Mom and her friends decided to have an egg laying party to see who could lay the most flea eggs. They can lay any where from 4 to 8 eggs at a time until they reach between 400 to 500 in their life time so as you can see when we have a flea reunion we have a lot of mouths to feed.

This is what I have to go thru before I can have any fun. First thing we moms do is lay our eggs, usually on a host animal, dog, cat, rabbit, does not matter. Most the time we will fall off into the host’s bed or even your carpet, or your nice couch. Flea eggs are only about 1/64” long and usually hatch anywhere from 1 to 12 days.

Once hatched we are what is called flea larva. At this point we have chewing mouth parts and feed on organic debris like dried fecal blood. We need this to develop into adult fleas as well as 45-95% relative humidity. This process only takes 1-2 weeks, then we go thru what is called instars and the whole process can take up to 20 weeks. After all that we’re ready for the real stuff — nice warm blood!

Did you know that we fleas have 6 legs and can jump as high as 7-8 inches vertically and up to 16 inches horizontally? Not bad for a flea that is only 1/8” long and has no wings... and to set the record straight we do not run away to join the flea circus but we do have piercing sucking mouth parts so we do not have any problem getting some nice warm blood from you your pets or even the kids.

Did you know that we Fleas can survive for up to 18 months whith out a blood meal? This is why, when you go on vacation and take your pets out of the home, I just take a little nap and wait for you and the pets to come home — then guess what? Lunch time! And what a feast we have.

You the home owners have to ruin a good thing by calling Apex Pest Control and before we can jump we fleas find ourselves being vacuumed up all over the house. From the carpet, under the furniture, even the pet beds are being washed. Then even the dog and the cat get a bath (boy that was funny seeing the cat get a bath) but batta bing boom the Apex Pest Control guys shows up. I thought I could jump out side but he found me. And that is my story.

~ Jerry Camp, West Coast Division Manager