What You Shouldn't do with Flea Sprays & Collars

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Dr. Adrienne Mulligan and I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic. I am here today on behalf of expertvillage.com and I am here to talk about cat grooming. Another over the counter thing I have highly cautioned you about are flea collars. Number one flea collars don't work very well because they work fairly well where they are at but further back on the cat, they don't do such a good job. Flea collars and flea sprays that are over the counter and have been on the market for 50 years, they basically have some resistance building up in the flea population because they have been used so long that fleas are developing genetics and are able to get away from you'll kill half of them and half of them might not die and the problem is that the ingredients in those and flea collars are very broadly toxic to everything. They aren't selective so at any level dosage, they'll kill your cat. They'll kill a little puppy, they'll kill a child or a fish or a bird. So they are not specifically toxic. They kill a lot of creatures and cats have been known to die from an overdose of too much of the things like pyretheans and promethiums are in those kind of products and in flea collars and especially if they get the flea collar caught in their mouth, then they are ingesting what is in the flea collar. I think those are things that are to be very aware of in cats and very cautious of."