Electronic Flea Trap?

Wow, it sounds like you're dealing with a challenging flea infestation, and I appreciate your concern for the well-being of your moggy. It's interesting that fleas are attracted to warmth, light (especially in the red-orange spectrum), and carbon dioxide. Your idea of a DIY flea trap using simple electronics like LEDs, a small heater, and a Carbon monoxide generator sounds quite intriguing.

By using a sticky pad or a mixture of water and dish soap, along with the attractants you mentioned, you could potentially create a pesticide-free solution to catch fleas. This approach seems safer for cats, considering their sensitivity to certain pesticides.

Electronics might be over the top, but although I'm a proponent of pesticides, I'm a louder voice when it comes to safe and responsible use of pesticides and even certain plants which are toxic to cats (in particular) due to their limited ability to process pyrethroids in their liver. They also have highly specialised kidneys to survive in very hot, arid climates.
 
Pyrethroids (and the synthetics) are not something a feline would meet in nature so they never evolved a resilience to them because they are derived from the pollen of chrysanthemum. Even though this plant does appear in Asia it's not the sort of thing that a feline would naturally eat anyway. I expect the same is true of lilies.

Simplicity is the key here of course. I'm going to have to try a fly trap- the ones made from tree sap - and see if that's sufficiently soft to allow the flea to become snared like it does with flies. I've seen them trap fruit flies in some number so that's encouraging.

The trick (hence the electronics) is to attract the animals in the first place. Also (and perhaps more obviously) we need to keep the sticky trap away from a curious moggy. The kitten has already got himself (rather amusingly, to my shame) caught in one. He jumped for it, I believe, and it got stuck causing him to panic and become ensnared. Luckily I was there and cried laughing while I was removing it from the poor little chap. Clearly this isn't toxic, thankfully.
 

And here's update number one... I've gone all simple. I've put a fluffy cotton (*heat resistant) mat over a heat pad (5W jobby from Amazon) and soaked the matt in some cypermethin --- that'll teach the little blighter and it'll also show just how many of these horrible critters are lurking in my home. Statistical biologyg shows that all we have to do is sample a few random square metres and then do a harmonic mean to find the likely amount. 

Yeeeeeahhh... don't think you want to know. But as an experiment its proving valuable data and more important, it's helping stop my poor fella getting covered in them!

How is your invention working out? I too have this flea "issue" and I don't want to have foggers or pest control people here because they have to keep coming to "control" the mini beast bugs, so that means the chemicals they use will be constantly in my home. No thanks.

I've put food grade diatomaceous earth on the carpets and have an electric flea trap which is catching them, but I'd need one every few feet to do the job. When I moved to this house 3 years ago, I also emptied my storage unit and brought the things here but since I work so much, the boxes are still stacked up and carpets I laid down are under the boxes. I will remove all carpets one day but that in itself is a huge task.

I sprayed a nice smelling flea repellent herbal spray on the cats and they've been getting the flea treatment drops monthly. But here in New Orleans the fleas are very bad because of people who don't care about their outdoor pets, it's hot most of the year, and the fleas have gotten immune to the flea products. I've just learned they're now immune to Frontline, which is supposed to be the best.

One thing I don't understand is there's a pill the cat can take that kills the fleas or keeps them off the cat instantly, but it's expensive and has to be given every day. I tried it and it works, but it's like $10 for 2 pills!! If it works so good why does the "industry" have to charge so much? 

I also "invented" mentally an electronic flea attracter and zapper but there's none to be found. Maybe MIT could invent one?

ID like to try what you're using but my question is How can a heating pad stay on all the time? ID be afraid of a fire and I'm gone more than 12 hours/day. 

I got as far as prototyping something but that's all. There are quite a few low-cost ones on eBay from China which to the trick. Not as well, but hey-ho.

A heat pad is optional but it makes a big difference as fleas are attracted to a couple of things:

• Warmth (a body)
• Light - red/yellow end of the spectra.
• Vibration (an animal walking around).

The sticky pads are essential - you can get these as extras with some of the eBay ones as that's what traps the fleas allowing them to starve to death - hateful little parasites that they are.

Vibration is the one thing all the commercial ones miss - I think that the vibration motor from an old XBox, Playstation or similar would do the trick there. It only needs to engage a few times a minute in short bursts. Vacuuming has a similar effect but also pulls them into the cleaner but that's not always easy as they hide in bedding, etc.

As a long-term solution, Indorex which is quite costly but worth it, protects your home for several months by killing fleas and disrupting their life cycle. The trouble is that fleas get onto humans when we're outside (or from other cats) and you start over again.

I've got a few days spare next week so I'll see about making something better.