Fleas and worse

[cjholloway]

When I was hooking up the AS, I noticed an odd smell inside the trailer. Thought a mice may have gotten in and died (first time for that, but well, maybe!). Started up the fridge and hooked her up for the weekend trip with the family. Noticed a lot of bugs on my light colored pants when I was in the truck. Guess what, FLEAS!

I stopped the truck and looked till I found the problem. 4 dead cats (medium sized kittens) in the rear storage area. Must have been there since the kids and I cleaned up the trailer in late May. I guess they jumped in there when we had the storage door open during the big cleanup (all day, as we had been to the beach and wanted to get all the sand/salt off the trailer).

Exterminator will handle the fleas Monday. I am worried about the smell in the rear compartment. I suppose I will cut out the carpet and replace with something. Anybody got an idea of what to replace the carpet with?

Yuck!

[Pahaska]

I would go with something like the astro-turf style runners I have seen at HD or Lowes cut down to fit. It would give some cushioning and keep things from sliding around too bad. It could easily be lifted out for a hosing down when appropriate. Even some of the indoor-outdoor roll material from those sources would do. A couple of feet wouldn't cost much.

[Ultradog]

Hard for me to read your post even up here in MN.
Yuck!!
Being a Dog person and not a cat person I'll chalk up 4 for the Gipper.

The fleas I could deal with,
but the thought of 4 dead cats in my A/S rather unnerves me.
Good luck!
Jerry

[Herm and Debby]

Before you rip up the carpet, you may want to try "OdorXit".

www.odorxit.com

Gary Sullivan, our local home improvement guy strongly recommends this on his radio talk show. I was kinda skeptical and the product seemed a little pricey but I learned from experience it's well worth ever penny!

When we returned home from an 8 day vacation back in June, I opened the door to the smell of cat urine so strong I almost "tossed my cookies"! We have two cats. Our cat sitter "forgot" to come over to take care of the cats for the full 8 days! Now don't worry, they had plenty of food...they chewed a hole in the bag of cat food I had left on the kitchen table and fresh running water. The male cat will only drink from the bathtub faucet. I left a trickle of water running in the tub.

The problem was the litter box. They are both very particular and demand clean boxes. Without clean boxes, they urinated all over the carpet in several rooms. I quickly ordered some OdorXit from their website. Fortunately, they had a sales rep about 10 miles from my house. I blotted up as much of the urine as I could than saturated the areas with the OdorXit. After two applications, you couldn't detect any smell at all!

It also works great on coolers and refrigerators with food odors. You may want to check it out!

[cjholloway]

Update!!

Fleas gone (multiple flea bombs/exterminator too). Carpet steam cleaned and looking good. No odors.

Will try her out next weekend if all goes well.

Think I dodged a nasty bullet.