Wondercide Natural Flea, Tick & Mosquito Repellent Cat Collar, Peppermint

Three of our cats are allergic to fleas which results in oozing scabs all over their body (mostly their back). This makes them ideal candidates for testing new flea poisons because, if the poison works, the scabs begin to dry out and heal within 48 hours. We ran a 7-day test with these natural collars. At the end of the 7 days, there was a small improvement in the scabs so the collars definitely do work to some degree. Not nearly as well as flea poison but that's to be expected since these collars are just a natural repellent, not a flea killer. We would've liked to have run a longer test but time was up - the fleas needed to be killed, so we administered flea poison. In a more mild situation, I would imagine these collars could possibly keep a flea population in check, and the number of fleas on the cats to a minimum. I doubt the collars could ever get rid of the fleas entirely but in conjunction with frequent vacuuming and cleaning of surfaces & bedding (to eliminate most of the larvae and eggs), maybe they could eradicate a flea population by sheer undernourishment and aging-out of the fleas. I hope someone else with a less urgent flea problem will run that test. The truth of the matter is that 100% elimination of fleas isn't always necessary. Sometimes just keeping the population to a bare minimum is an acceptable trade-off for avoiding poisoning your cat with flea poison. The collars didn't bother any of the cats once they were put on. The cats didn't like me putting the collars on them though because the collars are a bit difficult to put on and therefore take a bit of time (maybe 30 seconds). This is because the ratcheting notches on the collar don't pull through the slot easily when tightening. If the cat is calm and holds still, it would be no problem but our cats were squirmers. I don't consider this a negative aspect however, as it's better to have some difficulty when passing the notches through the slot than to have the collar fall off later because they pass through too easily. There is a risk however that because you have to pull so hard you might dangerously overtighten the collar by mistake. For this reason, I highly suggest keeping three fingers (or some object of similar width) under the collar at all times while you're tightening. The collar mostly smells like peppermint and doesn't appear to bother the cats.