Real small ants are in the cat's bowl. The food is dry food, not something that is obviously attractive to pests. A pest control guy comes four times a year. In fact, this latest infestation occurred an hour after the technician left.
Here's the rub: I can't see where the ants are gaining access. They just show-up at the bowl. There's no line of ants carrying food back to the nest, either in small cracks or toward a door. Any explanations? Thanks.
Use a larger bowl or aluminum cooking sheet and fill it with water. Then put the food bowl close to the center. You cats can lean over and eat their food but the ants will drown if they try to cross your self-made water moat.
Put some powdered sugar or flour on the floor and see which direction they go when leaving.
Have you checked for tiny helicopters?
Look more carefully. Seriously, I doubt they have parachutes or rocket packs. Therefore, they are walking to and from the the feeding bowl.
It often takes me a few minutes of intensive study to find their trail. But it's always there.
Probably under a baseboard, around electrical entries, under a door sill...they love sweet and/or greasy food. They loved our dog chow, and there were always crumbs scattered around pet's bowls. Ant bait with boric acid, along with thorough cleaning, will probably get rid of them. Keeping the food off the floor for a while, just putting it down every few hours for feeding, would probably help. Lots of pests change their living/eating habits during extreme weather conditions, looking for food or water or a dryer nest.
Take some of the cat food, mash it up with a little water and mix it about 12-15 cat food to one part boric acid. Put this in a small container (bottle cap) where the cat can't get it. It will get rid of the ants or at least get them to stop eating cat food.
I had some catfood that gave my place indian mealworms. Perhaps try a different brand of catfood.
For carpenter ants, I put down liquid ant bait from
Orkin closed, and the place is now a daycare. I'm not sure I'd want to house kids in a building that used to have pesticides.
I'll second that. When we had a similar problem we put the cat food bowl inside a saucer normally used under a plant pot, and added water to the saucer. The ants couldn't get across the water "moat" to find the cat food. That quickly ended the ant problem.
Hmmm, Maybe they came with the cat food.
bottle caps, or tupperware lids. they bellied
You quit seeing them, anyway.
Baits may work, but it's pretty hard to tell since generally ants have taken up residence for quite a while before the homeowner spots any.
Carpenter ants, not so much, but IME they run straight to the highest point in the structure to nest and there's plenty to eat completely out of sight.
I don't f*ck around with ants of any kind. I kill them, without depending on their cooperation.
I'm probably the only guy on the planet who ever offered a solid guarantee for CA, but I don't think the $ was often less than 2x 175.
Then you probably wouldn't want to send them to schools, restaurants, hospitals, etc., either. -----
- gpsman
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