Month: August 2010

My kitten Sugar was 5 months old with fleas.  She was an outdoor cat before my 7 year old and I adopted her.  I gave her a bath and then applied some of the Hartz flea drops for kittens over 3 months.  The only warning on the packet was “toxic to fish”.  Nothing about the danger it could cause.

She was catatonic, very sleepy.  I thought maybe she was just half-freaked from a bath.  The next day she didn’t eat or drink much and only wanted held.  I took her to the vet the next morning, they gave her a bath to get all the Hartz off of her and hooked her up to IV’s.  They kept her overnight.  Today they informed me she had fluid in her lungs from cardiac distress.  She held on a few more hours, but passed away this afternoon.

I broke the news to my 7 year old.  He lost his father a year and a half ago to cancer, and now he has another loss.  A useless loss that never should have happened.  I wish Hartz could have been with me to see my little boy sob.  They should be held accountable for this!

I am lucky to have found this website before even purchasing any Hartz or “OTC” Pet pesticide products. A couple of things I have come across in my fight against fleas that I wanted to share so they could be passed along through readers:

1. Check for fleas the MINUTE you bring an animal home, and continue to check as we know that the flea cycle is basically the most evil thing ever invented and will perpetuate the existence of fleas in your home. Don’t let it get to the point that your pet is crawling in fleas to do something.

2. For my 7 week old kitten, who had about 15 fleas that we picked off of her by hand, being submerged (except for head) in a couple of gentle baths using a small amount of blue Dawn Dishsoap was enough to kill many fleas. We found it was most effective for investigation of the scalp/skin for her to be damp as we could more easily see fleas crawling around. If you sit with your pet and talk to them gently as you use a flea comb (only called so because of its fine teeth) and some tweezers, you can get a lot of fleas off of your pet. Be sure to have a bowl of hot soapy water to put the fleas in as they can hop away pretty quickly.

3. I just got a sample of a Flea and Heartworm application called Revolution (Selamectin) from my vet at the kitten’s first visit. It looks legitimate, however the side effects listed on the product (quite clearly, might I point out) sound really similar to some of the side effects experienced by drugstore pet products. I am concerned about using this product on my pet, so if anyone has had good luck with it, please post!

All in all, I think the best way to handle fleas on pets is to pay attention to them, groom them regularly, and always talk to a vet before you give your pet anything chemical.

I would just like to thank the people who have posted their stories and to the creators of this website.

As a Vet tech working with animals, it breaks my heart when i see a kitten, cat, puppy or a dog come in to our clinic after using a hartz product. This stuff is so dangerous, we see animals come in shaking, foaming at the mouth, skin red and raw and even seizing. We sometimes have to stay overnight on a seizure watch. I know this stuff is cheaper then the advantage or revolution but if your pet needs to come in for an emergency, be placed on IV fluids, given medication and then hospitalization this will run you anywhere from $500-1000 with no guarantees of saving your pet.

I try to tell our clients about the dangers of pyrethrin based products such as hartz but some of them don’t believe me because they think we are just out to get there money- news flash: I didn’t go into this emotionally, mentally and physically exhausting proffesion for the money (we barely make above minimum wage) I did it because I love animals and want to help you protect your furry family members.

This is a pestacide- Do you really want that on your pet? Also what about that one year old that pets the cat? The reason these people CAN get away with this is because its a PESTACIDE and are not under the same FDA guidlines and restrictions as prescription products such as advantage and revolution.

I’m glad to see this website and hopefull it saves countless lives. Because as much as I love to see your pets I love to see them happy and healthy more! 🙂

Ok…so here goes, last night around 9:30 pm we were applying flea treatment to all our animals (3 dogs, 2 cats).  Well somehow my 14 yr old daughter accidentally applied the DOG flea treatment to her 2 yr old cat.  We didn’t immediately realize it, about half an hour later she came to me and said, Mom, Tigger isn’t acting right!  She brought the cat with her and yes he was acting very strangely, his skin was crawling on his back, his tail was flipping around wildly, and he was darting all over the living room, meowing very loudly (NOT LIKE HIM AT ALL).  We went and retrieved the med tube from the trash and off to the side noticed a small picture of what appears to be a cat with a X through it.  So we determined it must have been a DOG flea treatment, thankfully my daughter only applied a quarter of the amount in the tube, the rest was still in the tube.  We scrubbed his back with a mild hand soap and hoped that he would be fine.  15 minutes after finishing that, he again became agitated and was running wildly, this time we gave him a bath with dishsoap (he was not happy about this).  He slept through the night in my daughter’s room, meowing, skin crawling, and running around the room.  Called the vet this morning, they said that we had done everything right, as long as he wasn’t having seizures or drooling he would be fine.  Well this afternoon he started to drool.  Long story short, he is now at the vet, recieved 2 shots, and is being kept overnight for observation….We are hoping that he makes it……PLEASE DON’T LET HAPPEN TO U WHAT HAPPENED TO US!

To start, I looked on the box of Sentry Pro’s cheapest spot-on version and I can’t find anything that even says that you shouldn’t use it on a cat. Their extra strength version XFC says “Do Not Use on Cats,” but that is it.
I put approximately 1/2 a squeeze tube of the cheap Sentry-Pro on my Dog and 1/2 on my Cat. My dog weighs about 45lbs and barely moved all day. The act killed our cat, and this isn’t some kind of mild sickness or oops, this is pretty intense stuff. Donald was a really good cat, never had a single illness or problem, was incredibly well-behaved and liked by visitors, got along with dogs, and still played like a kitten at the age of 5. The producers of these products are sick people. They need to be stopped at some point. All of them: Hartz, Sentry-Pro, and Sergeants use PERMETHRIN as their active ingredient. This stuff is also the active ingredient in BUG BOMBS and RAID. We are being sold straight up pesticides to put on our dogs and cats. The absolute worst part about this is that I have found instances where these products have killed DOGS. For God’s sakes, the product is intended for dogs and it isn’t even safe for them. How does this happen? How do these big companies get away with this garbage? To whom ever reads this, know that if there is ever a mass court appearance, I and my wife would be happy to show with our story. I’m not usually one for taking things to court, but in this instance, I’d like some repayment for the personal anguish this has caused. Please be careful people.

My two cats here at my dad’s house, were both infested with fleas really, really bad. I mean I had never dealt with anything like this in my life, and of course me being strapped for cash at the time, and looking for a cheap way to combat these badboys decided to get a couple of Hartz Tick and Flea collars at the store I work at. Got home, put them on my cats, and felt a tad better for the time being. However, I began noticing that Kikyo (pronounced “Kee-kee-oh”), the elder cat here, was starting to get quite lethargic. Not only that, there was zero improvement with the fleas whatsoever, they were still crawling all over her and Noah. Noah eventually started acting the same way, very much lethargic. Kikyo actually acted more cuddly than usual, which was a positive change. However, guess what? The collars proved to be utterly useless as a mere 2 weeks later, the fleas were still attacking, and both of them continued to have unusual behaviour changes, with Kikyo exhibiting further lethargic-ness.

My dad eventually noticed how bad the fleas were getting when he saw them on Kikyo’s white belly, and decreed we had to do something about this. Eventually we bombed the house, and during that time I had the kitties treated at a local salon, the bombing failed though and I had to take them back to the salon. According to this place, one of the collars actually broke during a wash and got tossed, the other? It was suggested I get rid of it. I said “I will gladly do so, because these things were useless!” as I went to throw the other collar in the trash, I exclaimed “Hartz sucks!” and from there the salon worker told me they had someone come in for an emergency to get a Hartz product off their pet, I realized how fortunate I was to have my two kitties here today without much adverse effects at all, had I kept them on my kitties any longer, who knows what would’ve happened. Let’s just say I am using Frontline from now on, it has been working and though I saw one living flea on Kikyo one day after getting them home from my dad’s friend Cindy’s house during the time they were there before the exterminator arrived to take care of this problem, since then, I’ve seen nothing. Hartz is as useless and deadly as the day is long. If you really care about your pets, do NOT buy Hartz!

I truly feel for all of the stories of suffering on here.  Our pets are family members.  We wouldn’t give ourselves or loved one poison, so why does a company think they have a right to do this?

We just adopted a kitten, and i was given a Hartz flea and tick collar for him by my grandma, and i was busy at the time so i just threw it up on the counter.  Well tonight i thought about putting it on him, and i had heard things in the past about Hartz so i decided to google them, and a bunch of complaint sites popped up and I clicked on this site.

All i can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your stories.  I know some of them had to be painful.  Your stories helped save my little kitty.  That collar is now in the bottom of my trash can, and i will never again use there products.