Ticks in apartment... need advice

I am currently living in an apartment (in PA) that has had a tick problem, and just signed a lease to move into another place in a couple weeks. I need advice on how to avoid bringing the ticks with me to the new place. I am not sure how much of a worry it is, because I have not really seen ticks around for the past month or two. I am not sure if they are gone or just dormant or something.

My boyfriend is telling me that a need to bleach or throw out EVERYTHING that I have where ticks may have burrowed or laid eggs. (i.e my couch, bed, rugs, clothing). He also thinks that I need to have my cats taken to the vet for a flea bath. I have stuff to put on the cats to kill ticks, and I have not noticed any visible ticks on the cats, so I don't know if this is overkill.

Can someone tell me if all of this is necessary, or if just making a reasonable effort to wash things before I move is enough? I really do not want to bring ticks to the new place, but I also don't want to do a lot of unnecessary things that will cost me a lot of money and time.

 

First, ticks are not typically a problem indoors meaning that they don’t breed and live well indoors. Yes sometimes ticks willbe found indoors and even hatch out but really they don’t do well indoors.

Treat the cats with Frontline or another preparation that is labeled for ticks. Those preps are non-repellent so the ticks will go to the cat to feed and then die. If you flea bath them, flea collar, flea powder, etc then you will have used a repellent and you will be working against yourself. In other words, your cat will become the control agent while on the non-repellents. Let it happen. If you use repellents then the ticks will look for other hosts (you).

Laundering will do a lot to help. Don’t go overboard, as you alluded to in your post. Monitoring the cats is a good thing to do also.

 

Thanks for your reply. I am actually not 100% sure that they even were ticks. From looking online at common ticks in pa, i'm not really finding anything exactly like them. They were tiny black bugs with a hard shell and 6 legs, and they mainly showed up in the bathroom or around moisture. I found some in other places occaisionally, but mainly in the bathroom.

 

Doesn’t sound like tick behavior. Don’t know what they are, but it doesn’t sound like anything to worry about-probably what is referrred to as “occassional invaders”.