Hi Pidge,

I don't post here often, but I do often have this problem. I get ants in early spring (too much rain), and then in autumn (not enough rain). They come in looking either for relief from the rain, or looking for water. Can't win!

I wipe down the floor with a 1:1 solution of ammonia to water. It is a harsh solution, so you may want to dilute it more if you have the no-wax vinyl flooring.

This will deter the ants for a while, but you will simply have to keep on top of the problem.

They love animal feed, and cat food is the worst, because it is often left down all day. I know my cats demand it several times a day, even if they haven't finished all that was there.

Good luck with this.

mary C

Borax mixed with sugar and/or flour will kill them. But it's not good for kitties!! Not like a lot of other poisions...but I sure wouldn't want my pets to ahve access to it.
So your problem is to make it accessable to the ants and not the kitties....put it in a cage...or behind something....
You know your house and your kitties....so be creative.
I put the borax powder in the cupboards behind the drawers in my kitchen.
Linda C

Pidge, if you haven't had the problem before there may be something particularly attractive in whatever food you've feeding the kittens. Food for young animals sometimes richer.

Are you using a moist kibble or a really dry one?

What's wrong with ant traps? The cats can't get into them, and if you put them in places the cats can't go,they'll never see them. The ants will take the poison back to the nest and that will be the end of all of them. You want to kill not only the ants you see but the rest too.I've been using them every spring for probably 25 years.

Apparently these are the little pismire ants, they just march on and on, like greasy stuff and sweets. I have had success with a solution of water and white vinegar, just wipe everything down, and keep and eye on their tracks, once interrupted, they usually go away.

We put down a shallow, wide pan and add enough water to cover the bottom of it. Then we put the cats' food and water dishes in the pan.

The ants won't cross the water.

I should have said we put down ant traps and they are not working. Maybe I'm using the wrong kind? Marda, can you tell me what kind you use?

I use whatever I see at the moment because so far they all seem to do the trick. I think the last ones I used were Raid. Maybe they don't work on your kind of ants. I've never had the really little ones.

Sheila, I use Science Diet kitten formula. It's dry but not as crunchy as the kibble for older cats, so that could be the problem. I'll be switching them over soon and maybe tht will do the trick. In the meantime, I think I'll try the ammonia trick. Thanks.

They're referred to as "grease" ants in this area and they'd be teeny tiny, no? I got them for the first time ever last year, and like you, it was the cat food to which they seemed attracted. In fact, it was a pretty common problem for many people here last year.

The key to success isn't poisons, but prevention. They like the grease in the feed, believe it or not. It's instant calories, in addition to high protein. I bought one of those large plastic sealed bins and put the bag in there, and then started putting down just enough for a meal twice a day and then removing the bowls afterward. It's hard with cats, as I like to keep dry food down for on-demand feeding, but until I got the ant problem under control, it wasn't an option.

Like any other pest, when the environs stop being perfect for them, they move on. The cats soon picked up on the fact that when the bowls went down, they had about an hour to eat before they were gone. I also moved their bowls around to different locations for a week or two, as ants are social insects like bees, and once a scout finds food, the message gets back pronto to the flock to send out armies to get it.

If those are the teensy ants, around here, they're called 'sugar ants'. I've only had them visit once, but they were a persistent problem for the lady across the street -climbing up 2 stories to crawl into her kitchen. The main difference is that I mostly use vinegar and water for cleaning, while she used all sorts of commercial stuff. The only way she could get rid of them, was to use the vinegar-water solution and wipe the kitchen down every day for a couple weeks; she also used a mop on the exterior bricks. You have to get rid of the trails they use, and they seem to keep trying various routes for several days.

My parents when they were living in Florlda got those and that's what she called them. They would travel single file and she had a dickens of a time getting rid of them. She kept the dogfood in a large glass jar because that's what they seemed to like to get into the most. I always thought they were a southern pest. Interesting.

They get in my jack russells bowl so I sat bowl of food in bigger dish with water.They wont go past water.Thereare ant traps where they take poison back to thier nest then they all die.