The Great Flea Wars - Part I

Hey – Snicker here.

I don’t like fleas. However, fleas like me because my coat is thick and fluffy and it makes the little pests hard to find. My HM found that out recently when she used a comb on my neck and I heard her gasp! “Snicker has fleas!” I immediately knew what that meant. All of my feline brothers and sisters and me, would be purged of these infestations by some kind of chemical warfare. I know that my HM likes everything organic, but sometimes, even she has to revert to chemicals. She uses Earth-friendly Arm and Hammer baking soda on the carpets to kill the flea eggs, and that is OK as it does work, (it dries out the little pests) but she still has to treat each cat too.

Therefore, she snagged each one of us in turn. HM is very clever. She waits until we are taking a snooze and then she comes up behind us and spreads some kind of oozy stuff on our withers – you know - just out of reach of our paws and tongues.  When she came at me, I had one eye open and ready to split that scene, but she snagged me anyway. I saw the container of tubes on the kitchen counter earlier and it said “Advantage”. Whose advantage? Certainly not to my advantage.

Anyway, she got us all and we were all not happy about the nap interruption. We also all felt dirty because we couldn’t clean “the spot” between our withers.

Within 12 hours, all the little fleas were dead and HM got out the Hoover and started vacuuming all over the house. None of us guys like the “glopita-glopita” machine (the vacuum) and we hide in cabinets, under beds, behind the RCA TV, on top of the Westinghouse dryer and anywhere that we won’t be sucked up!

PS: The “glopita-glopita” machine expression came from the 1965 movie “How to Murder Your Wife” starring none other than Jack Lemmon (the cartoonist in the movie) and Virna Lisi! The “glopita-glopita” machine was the cement mixer that Jack Lemmon’s character heard outside his apartment.

Cat Ciao!