Fleas Cause Disease?
The Flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can” John Donne (18th century (?) poet).
This may have been the case even a few years ago, but in the last couple of months, quite a few cats have had severe (and even one fatal) illnesses and all initiated by fleas.
In Sydney, the flea which causes our annual plague is, in fact, the cat flea (Ctenocephalides felis), so they are perfectly adapted to their feline hosts, and are rapidly evolving to make the most of our ‘wall-to-wall carpeted’ lifestyle.
The Feline Flea
The earliest research into fleas was into the rat flea (for the purposes of controlling Bubonic Plague), and the research on the lifecycle of that flea was assumed to be typical of all fleas. However, our friendly feline flea actually has almost the reverse preferences to the rat flea, so control in the early days (and here I only mean the 1980’s...) was based on incorrect assumptions. Even today, you may hear that ‘fleas live most of their lives off the host animal, only jumping on to feed’. True for the rat flea (and possibly for the human flea, which is the predominant flea in Bombay.. by the way), but very wrong for the cat flea. Have you ever noticed what happens if you ever manage to pick a flea off a cat? It tries desperately hard to jump straight back onto their furry warm host. The adult flea spends all its time on your cat (or dog). However, only 5% of the flea PROBLEM exists as the adults on the cat, the remainder are ‘resting’ as eggs or pupae in the environment (especially carpets), waiting for your cat to breathe on them or for your footsteps to vibrate them into action! They hatch in less than half a second, and leap straight for whatever is warm nearby, and they won’leave till they’re dead or plucked off. Fleas do avoid light, however, which is why they don’t hang about on us for long.
Fleas Want Blood
As everyone knows, the flea is after your cat’s blood, and in fact the female has to have a blood meal each day in order to lay her eggs. Less known is that once a flea has fed on blood, it will digest itself and die within three days if it does not continue to get blood. So much for ‘hopping off’ and taking the chance that another feed will come by...! However, the flea can wait for up to a year for that first feed, so that makes last year’s problem extend to this year (unless you let your carpet either freeze or be steam cleaned to 70 degrees Celsius in the meantime!).
Cats and fleas have coexisted for thousands of years, so what has happened to upset the balance such that cats have died from their fleas? Little cats can literally be ‘sucked dry’ of blood from fleas - especially if they are in a warm, humid spot with lots of eggs around. However, part of a kitten’s problem is that they do not catch the fleas very efficiently, so one flea will stay on board, sucking and laying eggs (40 per day!) for a couple of weeks, by which time the first round of eggs are hatching (maybe even all 40 together!), and that is your little cat bled out.
I have also seen fleas kill an adult cat - a longhaired, short faced Persian, who could not catch fleas either, and was ‘bled out’ over a two month period. The owner did not know what a flea looked like, and by the time his cat was sick, even a blood transfusion could not save it.
Allergies
Another ‘flea-related problem’ is due to allergies to fleas (some cats even have epileptic fits after a fleabite, but most show skin or lip lesions). These cats get welts and red patches on their skin, often on their hind legs. Cats do not show ‘itchiness’ in the same way as dogs and humans, by scratching. They tend more to lick or ‘spend a lot of time grooming’. Some black cats even go brown because their saliva contains iron, and it rusts on their coat. Treatment for cats with such strong reactions to flea bites needs to be pretty efficient and persistent, but you can make most of these cats happy again.
Plus there is the blood parasite within the flea -Haemobartonella felis, who sits on cat red blood cells and causes them to rupture, leading to another type of anaemic death. These cats get fevers and jaundice, and can become quite ill. Recently a kitten was ‘just not growing or doing well’, and he even had a heart murmur. All due to a low grade infection of H. felis and the associated anaemia.
Most flea problems ‘sneak up’ on cats and owners, but now there are some great ways to keep your cat comfortable - find out please before your cat has a ‘miserable summer’. The flea is relentless in its pursuit of your cat’s blood! Be relentless in your pursuit of the flea!