I don't think he was giving you a line John, just not the whole story. The eggs fall off the animal, into soft furnishings where they hatch into the little larvae (basically flea maggots) and can be seen as tiny grey/white maggots about 1/2cm or 1/4inch long in the crevices of your couch or armchairs, under cushions or in the pile of the carpet or pet bedding. They're fairly mobile and will live quite happily in your sofa until conditions are right for pupation. As stated above, when that happens, they can wait for months for the right situation.

Vibrations from larger animals (such as humans) wandering about will set off the hatching - which is why we have them at the moment; we went away for a week and the house was largely empty of humans. When we got back and started to move around, there was a mass hatching and we're paying the price now for not vacuuming properly before we went.

LTS