Cats crawling away

[sgore]

My neighbor dug out of my flower bed a good size butterfly weed plant and put it in a pot on his porch, it had some very tiny cats on it. The plant is looking good with good leaves, but the small cats are crawling away from it. Does anyone know why they are doing this?

[Keith Petrosky]

That happened to me once too. One of mine hardly ever moved, and the other crawled away and never came back. Think mabye it had a parasite and it crawled away so it would not infect the others?

I saw this show where a parasite infected an ants brain, and when the ant died, the parasite grew into a type of fungus, and continued spreading throughout the whole colony.

[Teresa]

Is it normal for cats to crawl away when they are small (1 in or less)? I'm assuming this is because they are searching for food. I always come home from work and find them away from the leaves, on the side of the cage.

[Pat]

Mine often go up on the container sides when they're ready to molt. They come back down and start eating again when they've gotten a bigger skin to fill.

[Teresa]

That was another question I had, how do you know when they are ready to molt? If they are on the sides or under the paper plates should I leave them alone. I get them and put them back on the leaves.

[Pat]

I leave mine alone. They seem to know what they're doing.

[Pamela Moresby]

Quite often I've seen monarch caterpillars eat themselves off a swanplant. Their head faces in the wrong direction and they virtually chew themselves off the plant.
I've no idea why they do this!
Find that using a paintbrush, particularly for small cats, and putting it on another food source helps - with a great deal of PATIENCE.
Seen caterpillars go across the concrete like an express train as they ate and killed the swanplant, so had to pick them up and put them on another swanplant.
regards
Pam

[Megathymus ursus]

Disturbed caterpillars of all butterfly species frequently wander off. In some other species (like checkerspots), leaving the plant is a normal resting behavior. The parasite hypothesis is very unlikely, but some full-grown parasitized larvae do in fact act strangely.

I would gather up however many of the larvae are left and try to rear them indoors in some sort of container with fresh plant sprigs.