[diatomaceous earth]
This is amazing information. I don't worry so much about using Frontline and the like on Todd because he is younger and a lot more hardy than Kitty -- I mostly worry about using it on her because she's twelve years old and I don't want to use toxic materials on her unless absolutely necessary.
The diatomaceous earth is something Imrahil and I talked about before for use in gardens as a pest control. I never thought about using it for fleas. My biggest fear is accidentally overusing it and then finding it's just as toxic to Kitty as the flea and tick prevention oils are.
Still, those oils make both of the cats sick. When we put it on them they are low key and acting sick for several hours and that really bothers me (as well as them).
I googled diatomaceous earth as a flea prevention and everything I've seen suggests getting food grade. I'll see what we can find and let you know how it goes.
[Three hours awake during which I wrote a couple posts here, then three more sleeping... I'd best try to keep this very short. EDIT: HAH! Yeah, that worked well....]Depending on the younger cats' age, standard oil-suspension flea control could potentially be more damaging to the younger cat (as neuronal/brain formation can be disrupted). Last time I looked into them (the last time I needed to: about 20 years ago [they may be different now, but I kinda' doubt it]) I believe the liquid flea treatments' active ingredient was neurotoxins. And neurotoxins will kill neurons, no matter what species they occur in. So not good for cats (who, obviously, ingest the stuff in pretty large quantities as they clean themselves) or the humans who have contact with them (who also will likely ingest some, either post-petting a cat, or from touching a place the cat has been sitting). [Prior to finding the stuff, Omaha would foam at the mouth after getting treated with the oil-based ones. That's the same immediate result as ingesting rat poison.]
Given my neuropsych training I am very much against any neurotoxins being in my house, much less directly applied onto living creatures I care about.
My understanding has been that the potential side effects of the diatomaceous earth might be local skin irritation (which would end when the stuff falls/washes off). More serious ones should only only occur if it is used in large quantities so that a
LOT gets into the lungs. Those might be lung irritation (that might not be able to be relieved since what is basically stone wouldn't break down), or the albino equivalent of 'black lung' ('albino', since diatomaceous earth is white, while coal is obviously black). But you'd have to cake the stuff on to get to that point. [The reason it's applied to the back of the neck and between the shoulders is cats have a harder time reaching these areas and get enough leverage to potentially poof it into the air much. So if one only uses what sticks to the end of your fingers to begin with, that's unlikely.]
It is probably slightly worse than talcum powder (which should not be used on infants, and certainly not 'poofed' in the air), as the diatomaceous earth likely has sharper edges, but both have the same result in the lungs: they never break down. [Some time ago I read that it was suspected that use of talc on babies was one of the reasons contributing to the increase in asthma over the last 50 years. (Because no one said, "hey: don't poof this up in a cloud around your kid when you're changing it".]
I'd never heard of 'food grade' diatomaceous earth before. Only food grade stones I'm familiar with are things like NaCl, KCl, and the occasional med (e.g. LiCl).
[Yup, gotta stop writing. [And so much for the idea of 'short' once I started.] Took more concentration than anticipated to write this, had to edit the crap out of it to get it coherent.]EDIT: (For the spider discussion.) It may not work on them since their legs are long enough where their bodies can't touch and scrape against it (unless you know of a place the spiders have to squeeze into, like, between a floorboard and the wall).
As long as it isn't out in the open, or not able to be stirred by wind (e.g. near a windowframe or air duct) it is unlikely to come into contact with anyone's lungs, so pretty much inert.
I bought some food grade diatomaceous earth on Amazon recently. Avoid contact not just with lungs but any mucous membranes is what the packaging said.
Damn! And here I was thinking about adding it to KY jelly and marketing that for 'crabs' protection!
But I suppose it is necessary these days to say, "don't stick small jagged rocks in your eyes," and, "don't snort tiny stone razor wire - you won't get high off of it."
Topic: Pets (Read 101388 times)
