So, today I decided I would not let Petsmart rip me off. Petsmart is where I go to get my flea medicine, Advantage. I have three cats and I like to keep them flea-free. Luckily Advantage is a nearly a miracle drug and causes the fleas to fall off a critter so you do not even have to bathe them. Fleas then stay off them for over a month. Spiffy.
The problem is the shit is expensive. You can get advantage from three places, a licensed vet, a licensed exterminator, or online (which is a rather gray area). So you cannot just stroll into Wal-Mart a pick up a pack. So you can go to a vet, or one of those DIY exterminator places. I do not have an exterminator place nearby (I know of one in Oviedo), however Petsmart is nearby and they have a vet in them so I run over there on my lunch break. Petsmart charges outrageously for Advantage. At most DIY exterminator places or online, they usually go for a little over thirty dollars for a four pack of cat-sized doses. Petsmart charged me a whopping forty-seven dollars for it. Why? Because they can get away with it. They used to sell individual tubes, but now they only sell four packs at a time.
Last night when I was loafing around the house I noticed the cats starting to do their little 'flea jump'. That is when they are walking along and suddenly their tail stiffens up and they do a little leap into the air and run. That is because a flea just bit them. So I grabbed a cat and rooted around in his fur and sure enough I found a flea. They are not swarming with them, I have not seen any jumping on me from the carpet, but now is the time to squirt some medicine on them and kill them before they get out of control. Groaning at how much it was going to cost me, I tossed the cat over my shoulder and decided to do a little research.
Advantage is a chemical called Imidacloprid and was created and manufactured by the Bayer Company. Yeah, a drug company. (hippies hiss in the background). Imidacloprid is actually a form of nicotine, actually 'a chlorinated analog of nicotine' for those of you with any chemistry background. Nicotine and imidacloprid are known for being able to fuck up the nervous systems of insects (and zooplankon) without bothering the nervous system of other animals. Sounds great, better living through chemistry.
So Bayer, being a drug company, markets this as a drug. They have dosage size for small cats, fat cats, little dogs and fat dogs. A dosage for a dog over 55 pounds is 4 ml. A dosage for a cat over 9 pounds is .8 ml. Here is the kicker... there is less than a 10 dollar difference between a 4 cat pack that contains 3.2 ml and a 4 pack dog pack that contains 16 milliliters of Imidacloprid. Since it's the same chemical, you can get 20 cat-sized doses out of a single pack of big-dog advantage.
So, what people out on the web are doing is selling little 'kits'. The kits contain a test tube and a pre-marked syringe. You squirt the entire dog dose into the test tube, and then carefully measure out 4 or 5 .9 ml doses with the syringe. It's exactly the same stuff, and it's astronomically cheaper.
Alas, I tried explaining this to my mother who is going to retire soon and could use whatever savings she can. The concept simply flew over her head. She just can't believe the stuff you put on the dog and the stuff you put on the cat is the same 'stuff'. Big companies love consumers like my mother. They keep them in a shroud of ignorance in order to sell them more stuff.
2026 Update
Nineteen years ago, Ed was about to squirt dog-sized flea juice into cat-sized syringes.
Ah, 2007, when a man could still outsmart the system with a syringe and a test tube. Ed's little flea-conomy lesson is adorable. The internet was a gray market, the vet in the pet store was the only nearby option, and a four-pack of dog juice cost less than a four-pack of cat juice for the exact same chemical. Nineteen years later, the gray market has become a legion of subscription services that will auto-ship the same chemical to your door, but they'll wrap it in a 'personalized wellness plan' and charge you per furry soul. The big-box vet is now a 'pet care experience' where you can buy a hand-knitted cat sweater while you wait. And Ed's poor mother, who couldn't believe dog and cat juice were identical? She'd now be asked to scan a QR code, join a rewards program, and watch a video explaining why her cat needs a higher dose based on its 'lifestyle.' The ignorance is no longer the problem; it's the endless confirmation that you're being cared for while the subscription renews itself. Ed's DIY chemistry would today be a TikTok tutorial with affiliate links to pre-filled syringes — and someone would still be making a profit off the doubt.
“2007 Ed, when you measured out that first .9 ml of dog juice, did you feel like a genius, or just a man who was about to get a very confused phone call from his mother?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I’m gonna say both, honestly. There was a moment there, syringe in hand, test tube full of big-dog juice, and I thought, “Egads, I am a financial wizard.” I even did a little math in my head and felt like I’d beaten the system. Then I pictured my mother on the phone, holding a syringe, squinting at a cat that weighs nine pounds soaking wet, and going, “But it’s for a DOG, Ed.” And I realized I’d be explaining Bayer’s chlorinated nicotine analog for about forty-five minutes while she sighed and probably wished she’d just paid the forty-seven bucks. Still, the cats are flea-free, I saved maybe twenty bucks, and the only side effect is I feel like a smuggler when I squirt it on Moxie. So: genius, but a very tired genius who knows that phone call is coming. Take that, Petsmart.
