What are the tell tale signs of fleas in a property? I’m waiting for Mr PestControl to come and blitz the place after our tenants said they couldn’t sleep due to fleas.

Previous tenants were clean and tidy and had a cat which we allowed, but bought their own place and moved out 2 weeks ago. House was cleaned and new tenants moved in 3 days later. I’m not sure if a stay cat got in the cat flap and kipped a few nights upstairs and brought with it the fleas.

I’m sitting bare armed and legged in the hot zone to see the evidence but nothing yet.

Any advice?

Any advice?

Sit and wait for Mr PestControl 🙂

Cat fleas don’t generally live on humans. Bed bugs are more likely…

Stick some white socks on to see if they jump aboard.

They like heat – bowl of hot water with a lamp shining on it should attract.

I think they do leave ‘dirt’ – looks like flecks on the carpet.

‘dirt’ – looks like flecks on the carpet.

put the dirt on a piece of paper and sprinkle with water – if it goes red it’s flea poo.

If they only get bitten in bed it’s more likely to be bed bugs than fleas – they’d be everywhere people/pets went.

Had similar, moved into a house where previous tenant had a cat. Carpet was infested. Telltale signs were the other half kept getting bitten which was a pain in the arse as she was 8 months pregnant at the time so couldn’t reach her feet to put cream on.

Landlord had place treated which stopped it but they had to replace the carpet in the living room as it would appear they had let the cat use one corner of it as a toilet.

Mr Pestcontrol came in suited in his white “biohazard” suit and laughed at me as I was baiting the fleas. He said I was mad and that when its bad the fleas are jumping so high and hard they hit you in the face! He said we should see the fleas on his suit in no time. He started at the top of the house, the “hot zone” and worked his way through each room, down the stairs an through the downstairs rooms. Not one flea was sighted and we scanned his clothes every 3-4 minutes!

If there were only a few fleas to start with, and the tenants had sprayed with a commercial spray, maybe we’ve knocked out most of them already? This treatments should hopefully be the end of it and our tenants can sleep easy.

Fingers crossed!