Chiggers?

Could be. I'll check tonight and see if I can scare any up on a piece of paper.

Did a quick google on "chiggers" and found some inadvertantly funny advice: Do not wear dog or cat flea collars on your ankles or cattle ear tags on your shoes to ward off chiggers. It is very dangerous resulting in chemical skin burns and toxic effect to the wearers.

Cattle ear tags never occurred to me!

Sounds like chiggers to me, too.
I come from a chigger-free place, so I was scared spitless when I was told that I might get chiggers from my garden here in Ohio.
I read up on chiggers and there are many (ineffective) folk remedies out there. Besides prevention, the most important thing to know is that once you have a welt, the chigger itself is long gone. There is no need to put nail polish or gasoline on the welt to drive the bugger out.
I suppose that is little consolation when you are itching for weeks!

I use a spray that contains 25%DEET before going into the grass area and if I forget to do that - extra strength Benadryl

Is there something I can do to make the yard itself more tolerable? The grass is clipped, the beds are tidy, there's no moist or tangled areas for them to be breeding in....

Also, the cat (who comes out in the yard with me occassionally) has been itching as well. I
ve been all over his fur, and it's not fleas -- could the chiggers be getting him, too?

Is there something I could spray in the yard? And is there something relatively safe, that the cat could come out and walk on sometime this summer?

If you do a google search on Chigger Control, there will be all sorts of advise