Neighborhood ferals bringing in fleas to garage/yard

TSBLD

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I live in Texas, so living with fleas is pretty standard. I have a house, and there's 4 neighborhood ferals that come around to eat. They are definitely not strays or people's cats because they all fear people. They're all male, 2 we've been able to neuter and 2 not neutered. The 2 neutered guys are used to me and sometimes I've been able to apply flea prevention. I feed them in a section of my garage that isn't used, just inside. Lately when I've walked in, fleas are immediately jumping on me. In the past, they've never been this bad.

Ideally, one would remove the cats, close the garage, and treat the yard and be done. Obviously, the cats aren't going anywhere. I could close the garage, but they basically treat this as their house. When it rains or the weather is bad, that is where they hang out and sleep.

My neighbor also has some sort of pest in her garage, but she isn't sure what and she won't do anything to remove it.

My pets are on flea prevention, so I'm not super worried on bringing fleas inside.

The cats never act super itchy, and I don't see them scratching, but I'm sure they have fleas.

How can I approach this? I'm worried about the cats having shelter if I close off the garage. I could close it and nuke it with a flea bomb, and feed them outside for a while, but they don't have any other shelter except some falling apart structures in my neighbors yard.
 

Avery

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It is great that you can sometimes get flea prevention on the neutered males. I remember sneaking up so quietly when my formerly-outside cat was sleeping, leaning over as close to her as possible, and dripping flea medicine on her neck. Of course, she woke up and ran away but I know some landed in the right spot!

Could you trap the other two and get them to a vet for neutering? At that time, in addition to whatever else is needed vaccine-wise, the cats could be given flea medicine. Just a thought.
 

poolcat

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There's an oral flea med called Credelio that can be mixed into smelly wet food. I use it on the feral cat I'm feeding. It's prescription, though, rather expensive, and doesn't treat ear mites.

If the diatomaceous earth doesn't work, could you beg/borrow some crates and cover them with tarps as temporary shelters while your garage is being treated? Probably would need to set them out for a while before closing up the garage, so the cats could get used to them.

It's good of you to care for these boys.
 
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TSBLD

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There's an oral flea med called Credelio
I work at a vet, so I do have access to that (by online order) and Comfortis (in the clinic). I don't know if I can specifcally make sure each cat gets a dose tho.

I'll look into d earth, which will probably be a pain since the garage is huge!
 

di and bob

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There are oral treatments such as Comfortis, which you might try. then close the acts out and put a flea bomb in your garage.
 

Pywacket21

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Thing is, if a squirrel rat or some other critters are around, they can carry fleas too. How could you treat them? You can’t.
 
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TSBLD

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I ended up nuking the garage with bug bombs and sprayed our yard. It only did so much, and we still have fleas in the garage. They jump on me immediately. The garage is in bad shape. It's a concrete floor, but the foundation has cracked and left huge fissues in the concrete. I think the fleas hang out in the fissures til someone comes along.

I started to feed the cats just outside the garage in hopes that they won't drop eggs in the garage, and just stay in the yard where the evil Texas sun will kill them.

We did have a possum die inside the garage a few weeks ago also.
 

poolcat

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There are natural predators of fleas (7 Natural Predators of Fleas - FleasControl.com) but I don't know how you'd entice them into your shed. If you're really determined to get rid of them. . . have you considered closing up the shed so the cats can't get into it and calling an exterminator? I don't know how many visits it would take, or how long the interior would have to be off limits to the cats. But no matter how you treat the shed, it's probably going to continue to be infested to some degree if you aren't able to rid the cats of fleas as well. What a tough situation to be in, I do feel for you!
 
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