You just need to enlist a professional and tell them what kind of problem you have, and they'll guarantee they will get rid of them. But the bottom line is that if you don't control them on the animals, you'll never get them out of your environment.

Like I said before, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but in the case of fleas and ticks, it's more like a ton of cure.

No, I think I already answered that one, but not in my experience.

No, they don't hurt at all. Many of them are oral chewable tablets. For some of them, you only have to give every three months. There are also topicals because kitties usually don't take things orally so well.

The most important thing about fleas is that they're very hard to control. Once they get in your home, it's really bad. They come in three stages, and when an adult flea bites your dog or cat, it will lay somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 eggs a day. Those eggs turn into a form called the pupa, and they fall off of your dog or cat and go into your carpets and upholstery, and they're almost impossible to get rid of. You really have to use a professional to resolve fleas in your home.