I recently received one of those shopping from home catalogues (no pun intended!). There is a battery operated device in it that says that it deals with cat fleas effectively, without exposing the cat to chemicals etc. Anyone heard of them and are they any good?

Do you mean the electronic flea comb? Battery operated, makes a noise when it zaps a flea with 3 volts? I bought one off eBay a couple of years ago and used it on my cat but didn't think it was particularly effective. The teeth of the comb are too far apart, to allow them to be plastic tipped for insulation, so it cannot trap a flea or comb out dead ones, and it seemed to be zapping any knots and snags in the fur more than anything else. It may have killed the odd flea, I've no way of knowing for certain. I abandoned it and stuck to a high quality flea comb.

Heard of them. TBH, I can't see them being any more effective that a fine comb and certainly not as effective as the better & prescription flea treatments which deal with the flea life cycle continuously, not just adult fleas when and where you can comb.

Personally, apart from Stripe who has to have a 'spot on' wormer which also has a flea treatment (giving her tablets could be considered a dangerous sport) I rarely pre-emptively treat for fleas as basically, I haven't seen a flea, flea dirt, flea bite or any evidence of fleas in years apart from when we got Layla.

If your cat has fleas or regularly gets fleas, then use a good flea treatment like Frontline. If you have no flea problem, I would tend not to treat but groom regularly so your can spot fleas early and take appropriate action.

frontline, and daily vacuuming is all you need to keep fleas at bay.

I agree with the first part of your sentence orangebird but I can't claim to comply with the second

lol. I'm a bit weird, and very much enjoy housework. I also live in a very rural area, and have two very outdoors-y cats that like to trample all sorts of crap back into the house, so I don't really have a choice!

*whispers* so do I