This morning I noticed that one of my girlfriend's cats kept scratching at certain spots on her body. So we combed her fur, directing the little flecks that came off onto a white sheet of paper, and then applied some moisture to those black dots on the paper. Sure enough, they turned red, indicating the poor cat has fleas.
Later in the day I noticed a few bites on my ankle, and actually found a flea in my apartment -- which I somehow managed to grab and kill with my fingers, though I wasn't even sure it was a flea at the time, since I've never seen one before.
To prevent the spread
- I put the clothes I'd had on this morning while at my girlfriend's in the washer;
- I showered and shampooed a couple of times;
- Most important, tonight we planted three anti-flea foggers throughout my condo (which is carpeted), one in the living room, one in my bedroom and one in the entertainment room. We killed the electricity, sealed up the windows (mostly--I accidentally left them open in my room) and vacated for four hours;
- Tomorrow morning my gf will be fogging her own place, and taking the cats to a vet to get anti-flea treatment;
- Tomorrow morning I'll re-fog my bedroom, this time with the windows closed, as indicated in the instructions;
- I'll wash the sheets, pillow covers etc.
Hopefully this will do it.
We believe the fleas originated either Friday night or Saturday during the day (at the birthday party I mentioned in the park), but we're not sure who or what the vector was--person, dog, etc, since there were several comings and goings during those two days. I'm pretty sure I introduced the fleas into my own apartment after petting my girlfriend's cat this morning (obviously, before we realized what was going on), so I'm confident we're catching this early and terminating it swiftly.
Moving now from the microscopically mundane to the cosmically transcendental: finished reading Stephen Baxter's Deep Future. Too many thoughts to capture at this late hour, but I'll say I found it fascinating, if a bit uneven. Specifically, the tone of some of the moon-related sections seemed a little at odds with the rest of the more speculative chapters, switching from third person (and in parts second person) to first person, more chatty and less lyrical than the majority of the book. On the whole this is a minor flaw, however. And there were some chapters I'll be returning to, to be sure, as there are details I'd like to investigate more fully. Naturally, since the book was published in 2001 and makes some near-future predictions which are now behind us, it'll be fun to go back and check those out as well.
Day 39 of writing streak. 500 words on the fantasy story. Wanted to do more but the darned fleas threw a bit of a monkey-wrench in tonight's plans. Also did more planning for the longer project I'm going to be starting later in the month.
Walked instead of running tonight, and didn't quite get to 3 miles, but hit my calisthenics goals.
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