The Best Ways to Keep Fleas Away from Your Home in Cambridge

Prevention is a different job from treatment. Once fleas are breeding in the carpet, habits will not clear them and you need the property treated. Before that point, a handful of routines make it much less likely that a stray flea ever turns into an infestation.

This guide is about keeping them away. If you already have them, the flea control service page explains what we do, and this article covers why waiting rarely works.

Start With the Animal

In most homes the cat or dog is how fleas arrive. An animal picks up adults outside, or from another animal, and carries them indoors. Females then lay eggs that drop off wherever the pet walks, sits and sleeps.

So the single most useful thing you can do is keep every pet in the household on a flea product your vet recommends, and keep it up to date. Gaps are where problems begin: a missed month in autumn, one cat treated and the other forgotten, or a product bought for a dog used on a cat.

• Treat every animal in the house, not just the one you saw scratching.
• Put the next dose in the calendar when you give this one.
• Ask your vet which product suits which animal. Some dog products are dangerous to cats, so never share them.
• Keep treating through the winter. Central heating means fleas can carry on developing indoors all year.

Look After the Places the Pet Sleeps

Flea eggs and larvae collect most heavily where an animal rests for long periods. That means its basket or cushion, the end of your bed, a favourite armchair, the rug by the radiator, the back seat of the car and the dog's crate.

• Wash pet bedding and throws on a hot cycle regularly, and more often in warm weather.
• Vacuum the resting spots, the edges of rooms and under furniture, not just the open floor.
• Empty the vacuum outside afterwards, so anything you picked up does not sit in the machine indoors.
• Give the pet one or two washable sleeping places rather than the run of every soft surface.

None of this needs special products. The point is to disturb and remove the stages that live off the animal before they build up.

Fleas Arrive Without a Pet Too

Plenty of homes with no pets get fleas, and it catches people out. The usual routes are worth knowing:

• Moving into a property where the last occupant had a pet. Cambridge has a lot of rented homes and student lets, so when you move in it is worth asking whether there was an animal, and having the place checked before the carpets are covered with boxes.
• A visiting dog or cat, or looking after someone else's pet for a week.
• Wildlife in or near the building. Birds, squirrels and rodents in a loft or under a floor carry their own fleas.
• Second-hand rugs and upholstered furniture from a home with animals.

If fleas are coming from a bird's nest in the eaves, bear in mind that an active wild bird's nest is protected by law and must not be disturbed while it is in use. Deal with the fleas indoors and let the nest be until it has been abandoned.

Older Houses and Gaps in the Floor

Many of the older terraces around Cambridge have suspended timber floors. Gaps between boards collect dust and debris, which is exactly what flea larvae feed on, and they are hard to clean with a vacuum alone.

Where floorboards are exposed, a crevice tool along the joins helps, and filling the wider gaps removes a hiding place for good. Under carpet, the gripper strip at the edge of the room is the place to concentrate on.

The best flea prevention costs almost nothing: a dose on the calendar, a hot wash and a vacuum along the edges.

When Prevention Has Not Been Enough

You will know when a flea problem has got past the habits stage: bites around the ankles, fleas jumping onto socks, or scratching that carries on after the pet has been treated. At that point the eggs, larvae and pupae are in the house, and only treating the property reaches them. Our guide on how to identify fleas will help you confirm it.

Flea control is £220 for the first room, plus £60 for each additional room, with no call-out fee. The flea treatment cost guide explains how the rooms are counted and what to do before the visit. Every treatment is guaranteed: if the problem comes back within 14 days of treatment, we return and re-treat free of charge.

If you are not sure it is fleas at all, a pest inspection is £120 fixed cost and tells you what you are dealing with before you pay for a treatment.