How cute! Hopefully won’t be that much longer until they show up here.

He looks like a fat happy little guy. Hopefully he will find a safe place.

A monarch visited about two weeks ago and I really didn't want any eggs because my milkweeds are just waking up. Welllll!!! I now have 3 cats. Two are jays as of today and the third one is thinking about it. And I have 5 frit pupae chilling.

I really dont want to start this business this early.

I think a wasp must have gotten my little fella. He wasn't eating, and now he's just disappeared. I don't understand why the big wasps sting them to death. It's just for meanness. They don't eat them or anything.

I read when the monarch cats start declining and getting skinny its because a parasitic Tachinid fly has laid eggs on it and the larvae eat the caterpillar.

There are Monarchs, Sulphurs, and American Copper butteflies flitting around here already.

I found my little guy! Evidently, he had gone into hiding to get out of the sun, but he's back, and he brought his sibling. They are both eating away, and are fat and happy.

Yes, I have parasitic wasps too. I hate them. I sadly try to kill them every chance I get, because they kill a lot of my monarch babies. I hate killing them, but they are not pollinators, so I don't need them.

A monarch just laid lots of eggs on my milkweed today. I plan to bring mine in to raise myself, don't want to just hope that wasps don't find them.

Sherry

So pretty! I hope my milkweed gets a chance to bloom. I just found a bunch more cats on mine, one was happily chowing down n the buds.

This little guy was confused. He was sitting on a shrimp plant leaf, looking like

"Ewwww!! This tastes horrible!

And this big clump of 4 cats, which brings the grand total up to 7 so far.

"The job of the caterpillar is to eat and eat and eat. As the caterpillar grows it splits its skin and sheds it about 4 or 5 times." So it says online. Do you who grow the cats indoors see this? And, might the fat cat disappear to shed elsewhere?

And all I got were army moth caterpillars. We were infested so if there were any butterfly caterpillars, they're now gone too. We didn't have a choice. It was that bad.