God(dess) bless the wonderful folks at our local rescue group

[Lyric]

We've recently had financial troubles, and ThinkBlue1966 is trying to find a job in the worst way--up every day and out the door on the bus for another round of dropping off resumes and applications. I'm currently waiting to hear about a writing job for the University's English department over the summer, and waiting for her to find a job first, so I can find one that doesn't conflict with her hours (childcare is too expensive, so one of us needs to be here at all times.)

Anyway, because money is tight (more like non-existent, hah) we hadn't been able to afford to get another box of Frontline Plus fleakiller for the furbabies in the house. If we didn't have a dog, this wouldn't be as big of a deal as it is, but because we *do* have a dog (a fuzzy Golden Retriever/flea double-decker taxi) who needs LOTS of outside exercise in order to stay healthy, our "inside" cats end up with fleas because he carries them in every day. It's not enough just to treat him--believe me, we've tried.

So our usual routine is to buy a box of the Frontline Plus for "extra large dogs", and then when we treat the dog, we also put a few drops on each cat. Let me head off the objections about putting dog fleakillers on cats beforehand--it works just as well, it's exactly the same medicines as the cat formula (in fact, the "extra large" dog formula has a slightly *lower* percentage of one of the medicines than the cat formula does), and we only have to buy *one* $40 box, rather than three. Since Toby weighs about 75-80 lbs, and the "extra large" dog formula is for dogs 89-135 lbs, we figure that the few drops we take out of each dose to put on the cats evens out the weight difference for Toby. This has been our method for years, and we've never had a problem with fleas--until recently.

About two weeks ago, I started noticing that the cats were scratching more and more--although Toby still seemed to be pretty comfortable. I've been using the flea comb religiously, and lemon-water, and I even tried bathing them in cider-vinegar water--but I absolutely refuse to use the poisonous crap they sell at places like Mall-Wart, because it doesn't work, and it's highly toxic to animals. Unfortunately nothing helped for long, and four days ago I had two fleas jump on me while sitting on my bed. Oh shit. Our youngest cat, "Spot", who has lots of white splotches among a black base, had the worst case--her neck was starting to look raw from scratching. I was desperate.

So--we called a local no-kill animal rescue group to ask for advice, thinking that they might have some ideas on how to control the fleas until we have money coming in again and can afford the hefty $40 price tag for Frontline Plus. We've known these people for years; in fact, two of our cats are rescues that came from their group. When we explained what was going on, they told us to come down and talk to them in-person. I agreed, but I was nervous--I was afraid I was going to get yelled at because the cats had fleas. We took the bus down there today while Brendan was in school (and I got to talk to miss_american_pie on the phone while walking to the bus stop, woo!) I had to stop at school first, and then we headed over to the rescue group's shelter.

I walked in the door, and the blonde woman in the office asked me, "Are you Brandy?" I said yes, and she asked me a few questions, including what kind of flea-prevention we *usually* use. I explained it, thinking that I was about to get TWO tongue-lashings--one for the fleas, and one for using Frontline for dogs on cats. Instead she said, "Times are hard, believe me, we know. Here." and then she reached into a drawer and handed me a box of Frontline Plus for Extra Large Dogs. She also gave us a bottle of some kind of organic herbal flea shampoo for cats. No judgment, no "income verifications", no lectures. I was stunned, and nearly in tears.

We came home, flea-combed, gave Spot a small dose of Benadryl for the itching, and flea-treated all three cats plus the dog. By tomorrow, the damned things will hopefully be dead, we'll be vacuuming religiously, and we have two more doses--enough for all the animals together until we get our student aid checks in mid-August.

I'm going to send a thank-you note. But damn...I just wanted to tell the world how abso-fucking-lutely wonderful these folks were. Remind me to send them a check in August.