Flea circus, anyone?

So did everyone have a nice Memorial Day weekend? Mom and dad went up to Buffalo to help grandma and grandpa celebrate their anniversary. (How many years now? 67? Yeah, I think it was their 67th…) So while they were gone, I was watching all the cats – Kiko, Ozzie, Tiger, Koala and Dusty. (Every time I try to remember their names in rapid succession, I seem to forget one of them… :)) Unfortunately, the cats have developed a bit of a flea problem for some unknown reason. (Seriously – none of them are outdoor cats, so how did they pick up the fleas??? Do fleas often sneak under doors into houses, with no prior knowledge of the potential food sources inside? It was my understanding that fleas remained outdoors until the cats came to THEM, and only THEN would they hop on board the feline express and take a ride to the magical world of humans. Obviously fleas have begun sending out adventurous little flea search parties, who fling tiny backpacks over their shoulders – uh… do fleas have shoulders?? – and comb their flea kingdoms for food prospects.)

Anyway, I have an extremely annoying, mysterious flea-attraction quality – I seem to have some unknown characteristic that fleas love. You’d think I was covered in strawberry jam or something. If there are fleas within my vicinity, they WILL find me. I’m also quite sensitive to flea bites – while some people can be bitten a million times and never know it, I end up covered in miserable, itchy welts. So , needless to say, it was quite the interesting weekend. The fleas seemed to be particularly bad in the bedroom, where Dusty is sequestered to prevent fights with Kiko the Provoker. So every time I was in the bedroom, I found myself flinging fleas off my legs. Even so, I wound up with a couple dozen bites (plus a paranoia that I’ve brought fleas into my OWN house…).

Back when I was a teenager, and we had a couple dogs and a couple cats, I would get flea bites all the time. They would die down in the winter time, but summer was often quite distressing. Not only did I have to sleep in the only bedroom with no air conditioning (obviously more proof that mom and dad loved Eric best… haha! Just kidding! :) Everyone knows I’m the favorite… I’m sure they gave me the room with no air conditioning because they knew Eric was too much of a weakling to handle the heat… yeah, I’m sure that must’ve been it…), but I also had to contend with the itchy flea bites. At the time, I thought it was rather bizarre that I seemed to be the only person in the house getting bit. And I often seemed to get bit in the middle of the night… So, in an effort to even the bite ratio, I would occasionally switch bedrooms with Eric, or sleep on the trundle bed in his room – I THOUGHT that his room must’ve been flea-free, since he never got any bites. But even there, in the cool, air-conditioned comfort of the second-favorite child’s bedroom, I ended up with more bites. So unfair…

Eventually, I discovered through much research that if fleas are present in a house, EVERYONE gets bit – but NOT everyone has a reaction to the bites. And since I’ve always been so ridiculously allergic to mosquitoes, it came as no surprise to me at all that I should be one of the unfortunate people to wind up with welts and itching from flea bites. Oh well…

All this talk of fleas is making my skin crawl… at least I’m HOPING it’s the talk, and not actual FLEAS… (can humans use Frontline???)