War on Fleas

Holy cow, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.  I suppose that keeps us from getting bored our set in a routine.  Today, the issue is fleas.

I’m not sure how we got fleas, but fleas we have.  I don’t think you would call it an infestation.  I haven’t seen any myself, but Gene has found two and Peanut seems to be scratching and gnawing at himself more that usual.

Peanut is an indoor cat.  He gets to go outside when we carry him from the Everest to the truck on travel days.  On rare occasions, when we’ve left the door open to bring in groceries, he’ll slip out and down the steps, but he very rarely gets to the ground before he’s captured.  If he didn’t bring a flea in on one of his sojourns outside, then that leaves us as the culprits.

I really don’t know if fleas will ride along on shoes or socks.  We have read in some of the trail journals of thru-hikers this year, that some of the shelters have fleas infestations.  Perhaps we’ve brought back a few fleas from the trail.  Still, that seems very unlikely.

I just don’t know how we got this problem, but it has to be dealt with.  So instead of hiking today as planned, we drove over to Torrington to PetCo to arm ourselves with the ammunition for our war on fleas.  We got a 4-month supply of an ointment to squeeze on the back of his neck that is supposed to kill fleas, flea eggs, and larvae with the added bonus of killing deer ticks.  We also got an aerosol to spray on the carpets.

In addition to treating Peanut and the carpets, I’ve wash all the blankets, afghans, and vacuumed the carpets, floors, chairs, and sofa.  Then I tossed the vacuum bag in the trash.  I hope we’ve won the war on the fleas.

Going to Torrington gave us the opportunity to pick up a box of Peanut’s cat food at Walmart which they don’t carry at the local grocery in Thomaston.  It was time to get my prescription refilled as well.  We got a lot done in that one trip.  And PetCo was right next door to Walmart.

We were also able to take care of the truck and rental car issue today also.  The truck was ready for pick up late this afternoon.  Enterprise was happy to pick up the rental car at the Ford dealership so we didn’t have to take the car to Torrington.  In this age of electronics, Gene can take care of the charges for the rental car via the internet.  Super.

Now that this latest crisis is taken care of, maybe we can get back to our hiking.  We’ll see what tomorrow brings.