There are limits
Jan. 28th, 2026 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI have a great deal of time for St Francis of Assisi. I'm all for living in harmony with nature as far as possible, except... it isn't always.
Scripture teaches us that it's not just us who are messed up. So is nature; and you don't have to look far to see the results of that. I've just spent the last three days fighting off some bug that had no business in my system but thought it'd have a go in any case (thankfully this morning I woke up at a sensible time again, so I think we can safely say the bug finally got the message). Creatures kill, and do not necessarily then eat, one another. Slugs and snails munch on your carefully tended plants. And insects cause all sorts of bother; normally I'd much rather live and let live, but bitter experience has taught me that if I see an ant, I need to kill it, or it will bring all its friends and relations and I'll be overrun. Fruit flies (which are rife round here) are similar; I will tolerate the odd one or two, but more than that and I am obliged to get murderous, or they will be everywhere, and I really don't want them on (or, worse, in) my food.
But I think even St Francis would have drawn the line at fleas.
A flea is a very heavily armoured little vampire bug; they are practically impossible to squash (unless you can get them on a hard surface, and you have something rigid to hit them with), plus they have outstanding reflexes, so they can almost always jump out of the way. Their bites itch like stink, and one flea is easily capable of biting you in several adjacent places, thus multiplying the misery. So, every April (earlier if it was a mild spring), I'd treat all the cats with a prophylactic against fleas, and I'd repeat that every month or so till about October, and then I'd stop for the winter because you don't really get fleas on outdoor cats when it's cold. And this worked fine till Bob the Lodger showed up.
Heidi the ginger cat did not like Bob the Lodger, and I couldn't blame her. He was one of those people who are just intrinsically noisy. He couldn't so much as sit down in a chair without making a terrible clatter about it, and Heidi really hated noise. So she used to stay out of his way as far as possible, which meant she spent a lot of time outside; and that, in turn, made it very hard to catch her when it came to flea-squirting time. And it soon became very clear that, if you have four cats and you squirt only three of them against fleas, then you have fleas.
Bob complained bitterly. To hear him, you'd have thought the fleas were my fault. I had to explain to him that I'd never had a problem with fleas before he arrived, and the only reason I couldn't squirt all the cats was because Heidi kept away from him because he was too noisy and that scared her. I think that went straight in one ear and out the other. He just kept moaning about how he was sick of being bitten, and I said, "yes, funnily enough, so am I".
I had a pair of fluffy slippers at the time. You know, those mules that are held on by nothing more than a bit of fluff at the front; and, inevitably, the fleas got into the fluff, and they bit my feet to the point where I lost it completely. I took the slippers off and put them in the microwave. Yes, I know; but I really wasn't thinking straight at that point. (Had I been, I'd have put them in the freezer instead. That would certainly have worked, though they'd have had to be in for a bit longer.)
Well. It did kill the fleas. Unfortunately it also killed the slippers; I have a very keen sense of smell so I was able to stop the microwave before anything too terrible happened and open all the windows, but it was still too late to save the slippers, and the microwave smelt pretty awful for a few days.
Eventually, Bob went off to America and everything went back to normal. I haven't had to deal with fleas since then. But I also never wore fluffy mules again...
Scripture teaches us that it's not just us who are messed up. So is nature; and you don't have to look far to see the results of that. I've just spent the last three days fighting off some bug that had no business in my system but thought it'd have a go in any case (thankfully this morning I woke up at a sensible time again, so I think we can safely say the bug finally got the message). Creatures kill, and do not necessarily then eat, one another. Slugs and snails munch on your carefully tended plants. And insects cause all sorts of bother; normally I'd much rather live and let live, but bitter experience has taught me that if I see an ant, I need to kill it, or it will bring all its friends and relations and I'll be overrun. Fruit flies (which are rife round here) are similar; I will tolerate the odd one or two, but more than that and I am obliged to get murderous, or they will be everywhere, and I really don't want them on (or, worse, in) my food.
But I think even St Francis would have drawn the line at fleas.
A flea is a very heavily armoured little vampire bug; they are practically impossible to squash (unless you can get them on a hard surface, and you have something rigid to hit them with), plus they have outstanding reflexes, so they can almost always jump out of the way. Their bites itch like stink, and one flea is easily capable of biting you in several adjacent places, thus multiplying the misery. So, every April (earlier if it was a mild spring), I'd treat all the cats with a prophylactic against fleas, and I'd repeat that every month or so till about October, and then I'd stop for the winter because you don't really get fleas on outdoor cats when it's cold. And this worked fine till Bob the Lodger showed up.
Heidi the ginger cat did not like Bob the Lodger, and I couldn't blame her. He was one of those people who are just intrinsically noisy. He couldn't so much as sit down in a chair without making a terrible clatter about it, and Heidi really hated noise. So she used to stay out of his way as far as possible, which meant she spent a lot of time outside; and that, in turn, made it very hard to catch her when it came to flea-squirting time. And it soon became very clear that, if you have four cats and you squirt only three of them against fleas, then you have fleas.
Bob complained bitterly. To hear him, you'd have thought the fleas were my fault. I had to explain to him that I'd never had a problem with fleas before he arrived, and the only reason I couldn't squirt all the cats was because Heidi kept away from him because he was too noisy and that scared her. I think that went straight in one ear and out the other. He just kept moaning about how he was sick of being bitten, and I said, "yes, funnily enough, so am I".
I had a pair of fluffy slippers at the time. You know, those mules that are held on by nothing more than a bit of fluff at the front; and, inevitably, the fleas got into the fluff, and they bit my feet to the point where I lost it completely. I took the slippers off and put them in the microwave. Yes, I know; but I really wasn't thinking straight at that point. (Had I been, I'd have put them in the freezer instead. That would certainly have worked, though they'd have had to be in for a bit longer.)
Well. It did kill the fleas. Unfortunately it also killed the slippers; I have a very keen sense of smell so I was able to stop the microwave before anything too terrible happened and open all the windows, but it was still too late to save the slippers, and the microwave smelt pretty awful for a few days.
Eventually, Bob went off to America and everything went back to normal. I haven't had to deal with fleas since then. But I also never wore fluffy mules again...
