My cat has fleas and we have quarantined him in the bathroom for the last couple days while we cleaned and treated our apartment. My SO wants to keep him in there for another week but that seems nuts to me. Is this reasonable?

Hi there, I have a beautiful 2yo orange tabby boy that I love more than anything. We live in a large apartment complex with my SO. He is an indoor cat and an only child. First of all I admit this is totally my fault because I lapsed for several months on giving him his Revolution because it is expensive and I figured it would be fine since he never goes outside. I am NEVER making that mistake again. On Sunday we found fleas on him and gave him a traditional pesticide flea bath, washing maybe 10-20 fleas off him, and applied Frontline. Since Monday every day I’ve given him a waterless foam flea bath with plant-based ingredients and combed his coat out, finding less fleas every time and none today. We have cleaned and vacuumed the whole house and applied diatomaceous earth, pesticide spray, and plant-based spray where appropriate. I’ve washed almost everything in the house but I still have a lot of backlogged laundry to go through.

Since Tuesday we have been keeping him quarantined in the bathroom after watching him scratch flea eggs into the bed (ew). We hadn’t finished cleaning the rest of the house at that point and we didn’t want him to pick up or drop off any more fleas into the house before we finished cleaning. This has made him miserable. He is a very active and social cat that always wants to be with his people and, like most cats, hates closed doors on principle. He’s been crying a lot and while I try to visit him as much as I can, I’ve been very busy trying to clean everything and I miss curling up in the bed with my baby.

This is my first cat but my SO grew up with several and has dealt with fleas before so I’ve been deferring to his expertise. Since the cleaning is mostly done and I found zero fleas on the kitty today, I asked him if he thought it was okay to let him back out into the rest of the house. He said we should keep him in there for another WEEK until we were sure the problem was dealt with. Now, I’ve never dealt with fleas before, but the infestation doesn’t seem too terrible. I have only seen one flea that wasn’t on my cat. My SO has three or four bites on his ankles from wearing thick socks around the house but I haven’t gotten any. I think it’s cruel to keep a playful, energetic cat, who loves running around the apartment and spending lots of time with his people, shut in a bathroom for over a week. I want this problem gone as soon as possible, but I don’t want to make my little buddy miserable.

What is the best thing to do in this scenario? Is it really that risky to let him out at this point?

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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/avwgh1/my_cat_has_fleas_and_we_have_quarantined_him_in/