Hello, everyone. For reasons too involved to list, I have very limited
posting ability to Usenet. I can read as much as I want, however, so
please forgive my lack of quick response to answers to this query.

All last year in this rural farming area, we never saw a single tick.
Not one.

Suddenly, starting about two weeks ago, ticks seemed to be everywhere.
Our indoor cats have not been affected, but the barn cats in the area
all seem to have multiple ticks feeding. It is terrible.

I have spent the last two days reading every .edu and .gov domain
website I could find about these filthy bloodsucking fiends, and have
already begun to take some of the actions they recommend, including
cutting grass to golf-course heights, pruning all low-hanging tree
limbs and generally making the surrounding environment unwelcoming to
ticks in all three of their life stages.

However, I would like to combine these efforts with a chemical
approach. Discouragingly, I have read that the most effective legal
residential insecticide for tick control is pymethrin and pymethroid.
Though 6-45 times less effective than illegal phosphate insecticides,
anything is better than nothing.

The problem with pymethrin-based poisons is that cats are particularly
sensitive to its toxicity, or so I have read. I really do not want to
present these barn cats with any more problems than they already face,
but the ticks can also kill them.

I have recently come across a recommendation to use something called
Sevin against the ticks. I have been unable to find any layman's
reference to Sevin's effect on mammals (cats in particular and wildlife
in general).

Any help or recommendations would be GREATLY appreciated. I have
included a good email address in the Reply-To: line in the header.
Thanks in advance for any constructive response.