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Frugal Friday

Welcome back to Frugal Friday! In honor, so to speak, of the wildly inflated price of eggs, this month will be Egg Meme Month on Frugal Friday. Yes, you may consider this encouragement to get your own henhouse up and running!

Aside from that, this is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc. I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

With that said, have at it!

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Last week, someone mentioned a book about pet health care and someone else mentioned the heavy vaccination schedule and how it can lead to tumors or death in your pets.

I've owned cats (they'd beg to differ) most of my life.
We currently have four.

When we acquired this set (one dumpster kitten and three young adults from two different Petsmarts), we decided that they weren't going to the vet.

We no longer have a dog and haven't for several years. This is critical because even if your kitties are strictly indoors, your dog brings in fleas, ticks, and everything else.

Thus, strictly indoor kitties who came into our house clean. Dimitri, our dumpster kitten saw the vet, got dewormed and defleaed, and so forth and then three weeks later, we got Lulu, Madeline, and Sasha.

They eat Iams dry food and split two cans every day of Friskies.
We decided that, even though we'd stuck to dry food in the past, canned food probably had nutrients that meat-flavored sawdust did not.

So, no flea poison, no tick poison, no vaccines (because there's no exposure), four litterboxes (which we clean faithfully), and a good diet.

Four years later, they're all bright-eyed, active, and healthy.

I've met a few other people who admit they do the same if their cats are strictly indoors AND there are no dogs.

What do you do?

Teresa,

This is sort of related to what you brought up. I've been wondering about vaccinations and vet stuff too - I adopted a kitten last year. The intention was to keep him indoors, with minimal vaxxes (rabies), and no flea treatments. But he decided otherwise and is now an indoor/outdoor cat. There is *a lot* of wildlife around here, and a high risk of tick-borne infections, so I've decided to do one of those flea-and-tick preventatives that you apply to the skin. They're probably toxic but I don't know what else to do. I really don't want to fumigate the house for fleas later on. Is there a less toxic, yet reliable, way to do flea and tick prevention? What vaxxes do people think are worth the risk/benefit ratio for an outdoor cat?

Chickadee VT

I agree on the toxicity of the skin-applied flee and tick preventative. When we had a dog we did this a few times and we could tell he would feel ill afterwards for 2 or 3 days. Its not as bad as getting lyme disease, but there has to be a better way.

The two "core" cat vaxxes are rabies and FVRCP. You need to give rabies, though rabies in cats is very rare, because if your cat nips someone, even in self-defense, and isn't vaxxed she will get a lengthy quarantine at best. An outdoor cat who isn't obviously owned, if caught, would just get her little head chopped off (to "check for rabies"). The difference between the one-year shots and the three-year shots is basically just testing/labeling and price. On balance the three-year shots are more economical, as well as safer for your cat, since fewer shots are given.

FVRCP protects against three diseases, one of which (feline distemper) survives on objects for up to a year. You can pick it up on your shoes walking through grass and bring it to your indoor cat. However, cats who have had the regular kitten injection series then retain high titers for at least seven years for all three, maybe for a lifetime for two. Vets will tell you to give boosters at least every three years but that is not necessary.

One of my cats is of feral origin and spends days outdoors, and she once brought fleas in to infest my poor old sedentary rescue cat, AND ME, and it took months of battle to get rid of them. Now, during the warm months I give her the topical treatment once a month. I'm sure it IS toxic, but fleas carry diseases, and the flea-killing house sprays are toxic too.

I did get her one shot of the feline leukemia vax as well, but probably wouldn't repeat it. Like the over-rated FIV, FeLV spreads through bodily fluids, mainly bites, and she's a runner, not a fighter. But if your cat is a scrapper, he should probably have it. I wouldn't do that for my indoor cat, since no grubby street cat is going to come in here and bite him.

Thank you for this. I was planning on rabies vax but wasn't sure if the one year or three year are better. And I didn't realize that about feline distemper. Yikes. Fleas in the house are no joke. I haven't seen yet how my kitten reacts to other cats but he has a feisty temperament.

Flea comb them Often. (Like,Every time you pet them)
Wash all bedding, sweep or vacuum floors.
"Never have a rug so big you can't take it out and Beat it!"
Various herbs. (But most of the ones that are Most effective are Also toxic to cats.)

For fleas, constant flea-combing and vacuum will help. A little.

Sadly, nothing works as well as those few drops on the back of the neck every month.
When we had a dog and still did flea treatments for all the animals (and heartworm for Fido and Muffy), I'd give them ALL a medication vacation for December, January, and February because I assumed -- correctly as it turned out -- that fleas and ticks were in hibernation. I never had a problem and believe me, we would have known.

Flea collars are useless.

The other thing that *MIGHT* help is having a widely varied yard with many, tiny ecosystems because the healthier your backyard ecology is, the more varied it is and, thus, you have a wider array of healthier little critters like rabbits, squirrels, mice, voles, moles, chipmunks, shrews, and snakes and hawks to eat them. I don't KNOW if this helps.

I ALSO change my birdbath water faithfully, never let water stand anywhere, and maintain a mosquito bucket of doom from spring into late fall. Many diseases are mosquito-borne so if I have fewer mosquitoes, I have less risk. I can't do anything about the neighbors other than discreetly dump their mosquito plantations.

If you've got regular, hard winters, a medication vacation might work. If you live in Florida, it's flea and tick prevention year-round.

Please explain the mosquito bucket of doom!? Others may be interested in having one :)

The herb tansy is known for repelling fleas.

I don't have tansy but I do grow yarrow.

After posting here about mosquitos and ticks a few weeks ago I found a paper where scientists tested a few local herbs (IIRC, in Jordan) for repelling fleas, and yarrow came up top.
Its scent is very mild and the cat does not seem to mind it. I have been rubbing it on my hands and then rubbing him, with apparently no ill effects and the diminution of the line of hard little parasites which were living along his jawline. (We had resorted to the flea drops last month as fleas were getting him badly, but being of a breed with very thick fur he didn't seem to get much relief.)

It says on the Internet that others have also found yarrow of use for fleas, eg

https://fleaseason.com/homemade-organic-flea-powder-recipe-2/

However, I myself wonder how suitable the powder would be for cats. I have found diatomaceouus earth to be awfully messy and difficult to apply thoroughly; further, they probably would object to the smell of neem, and not stick around to be treated. If anyone gives it a go please report!

iridescent scintillating elver

Kallianeira,

My cat might tolerate being lightly rubbed with an herb powder. I suspect he won't tolerate flea combing though it's worth a try.

I agree, "mosquito bucket of doom" sounds intriguing! Teresa, what is that?

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%% The Mosquito Bucket of Doom %%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

or, how to minimize mosquito reproduction in your yard!

At heart, the mosquito bucket of doom is a big bucket (Orange Home Depot buckets are excellent as supposedly, mosquitoes are attracted to the color) containing water, dead weeds, and >>>> this is CRITICAL >>>> a mosquito pond dunk which keeps the mosquito eggs from hatching. Dump the water and weeds and mosquito dunk every month without fail. Replace with fresh water, a new handful of weeds, and a fresh mosquito dunk.

Mosquitoes lay their eggs in this inviting, fetid pond and they never hatch.

Mosquito dunks are sold in garden centers for people with ornamental ponds to keep the skeeters down. You need a half dunk for a bucket so a package of six will give you 12 months of coverage. They're safe for expensive koi.

Jo Brichetto devised this method.
Here's the link to her website where she goes into detail:

https://sidewalknature.com/2022/05/08/mosquito-bucket-of-doom/

She's on Instagram and Facebook as well as posting regular updates about sidewalks, your neighborhood, and nature.

This will be our second full year with the bucket of doom. Has it helped? Yes, I'd say my skeeter count is lower, although it helped considerably more when the next door neighbor removed the decaying shower stall from behind his garage that was a mosquito plantation.

Like everything else, doom buckets take time to show their effects and you STILL must remove every other source of standing water that you can find. Mosquitoes can breed in a teacup of standing water.

Teresa from Hershey— Thank you so much for this!
Nom du jour: Beatrix Potter Fan Clun Prez

Well well, so many things you Transatlantics can get that we just don't merit here in the Antipodes!

Bacillus thuringiensis is only available in complicated fruit fly traps as far as I can tell and yet that mozzie dunk solution sounds to be totally miraculous for control of mosquitoes, with which practically every area is plagued. Of course there are toxic chemical larvicides on the market. Wouldn't it be frugal to culture your own bacteria for the pond? (hint) We can't even buy native fish to eat the larvae; virtually all the species in the pet market are imported. Woe betide the owner whose minnows escape into the nearby national park...

And linen - if it's not a luxury dress, shirt or see-through thin pair of pants then forget it. Practical garments? Excuse me while I stifle a macabre chcukle. The hours I have spent searching online for ordinary linen clothes and underwear would have been sufficient for me to learn to sew them myself... but to source the fabric, again forget it. $35+ per metre plus postage.

Mary, please don't mention socks without polyester: you'll make me cry. All right, I exaggerate - here they come with nylon, or polyester, or perhaps both.

iridescent scintillating elver

I did the winter vacation from flea meds with my last cat and it worked well. She hated going outside in the winter. But this cat doesn't seem to mind it, and he goes everywhere.

There's plenty of animal diversity here. He's probably going to get up close and personal with all of it at some point. I know from personal experience that there are ticks in the yard : ( We have lots of "mosquito plantations" in the area too (thank you for the chuckle!), but they're the natural kind - marsh, forest pools, etc.

They eat Iams dry food and split two cans every day of Friskies.

Without meaning to be critical, I am surprised you haven't had problems with this diet. We used to feed our cats Iams decades ago. Then Iams was bought by a major conglomerate. We were losing every one of our cats early (i.e., younger than they should have been) due to kidney related problems. When we switched to a premium, locally-made brand of kibble, the kidney issues went away and our cats lived long, happy lives.

In contradiction to our own experience, my mother has always fed her cats grocery store quality food and has not experienced the kidney problems we did. Of course, all of her cats were free-range, indoor/outdoor cats. Ours, being city dwellers at the time, were indoors only. Perhaps, they were getting something outdoors to augment their diet?

Caldathras

The IAMS has worked well for us.
I vary which variety I use.

If I eventually notice an issue, I'll move up a notch.
I DO know that the cheaper the dry food, the more sawdust there is.

In the end, because we are poor (our health care is subsidized by the state of Pennsylvania and our children were on the free lunch program while in school), cost matters.

I can't buy organic raw chicken breasts for my cats when I sure can't afford them for us.

No doubt. I've never understood why chicken is so expensive. We don't do raw diets either (other than the rodents they catch outside -- rodents sure are plentiful around here). I certainly understand. We do the best we can for them within our means.

Caldathras

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Frugal Friday

Our four cats don't see the vet

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dump and dunk

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