Anita’s Blog — How to Move a Cat

Not often, but sometimes, I feel compelled to help out Mother Nature.

For instance, twice this month, one of my cow pen daisy bushes has been thick with butterfly larva. What was a lush, green bush one day, was suddenly sickly looking with little black blobs all over it.

The blobs were Bordered Patch butterfly larva.

Bordered Patch use cow pen daisy, (Verbesina encelioides), sunflowers, ragweed, cocklebur and other related plants as host (larval) plants.

But so many on one plant? There wouldn’t be enough food to support that many caterpillars. What was Mother Nature thinking?

So, to help, I grabbed a box flat and hand clippers from the garage. With the box under the larva-laden stems, I clipped the stem into the flat and transported all to healthy cow pen daisy plants around the yard. Of course, the little critters fell off the stems so I gently (and laboriously) used a leaf to distribute the little cats onto new cow pen daisy leaves.

As the cats matured, there were still too many on the original plant. I repeated the process. The larger cats were easier to introduce to new leaves. Fortunately, I have about two dozen cow pen daisy plants to support all this activity.

In a similar consideration, in Harlingen’s Hugh Ramsey Nature Park, the team of volunteers recently planted a few Monarch-specific milkweed plants at Crucillo Corner on the Ebony Loop trail. The park already has numerous milkweed vines that reseed and prosper each year.

Monarch and Queen butterflies use only milkweed as larval plants. There are three different species of milkweed vines in Ramsey Park, and about a dozen butterflyweed, Veintiunilla – Asclepias curassavica) plants. According to the Dr. Alfred Richardson and Ken King book, “Plants of Deep South Texas,” there are 16 species of milkweed in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. We hope to establish prairie milkweed, Asclepias oenotheroides, in the park this fall.

Christina Mild had observed a Queen butterfly laying eggs on the newly planted milkweed (butterflyweed, Veintiunilla – Asclepias curassavica). She had a good recommendation. She and I both have observed that Monarchs generally avoid milkweed vines, and Queen butterflies have no problem using them. If we were to see Queen caterpillars eating the plants, we would transfer them to the more-available near-by milkweed vines.

Since there are so few (milkweed) butterfly weed plants in the park, and so many milkweed vines, we thought it best to save the butterflyweed plants for the Monarchs and let the Queens have the vines.

A dozen inch-long caterpillars would wipe out the six milkweed plants quickly, and at one-inch, the cats would be only half grown.

Monarch and Queen caterpillars are very similar. The Queen has three sets of antennae-like protuberances. The Monarch has two sets.

Here’s how to transfer caterpillars by hand. Take your gloves off. You will have to pluck the caterpillar off the plant. It’s fairly easy, but the cat does give some resistance. All its little feet are like suction cups. Why take off your gloves? So you can feel the cat and not squeeze it accidently and injure it.

Once you have the cat cupped in your hand, transport it to the milkweed vine. The cat will have made itself into a little ball.

You’ll have to hold your hand under the leaf you are taking the cat to and lay the cat on the leaf. He will play dead for a few seconds and if you let the leaf fall, the cat will slide off. So, wait ‘til the cat figures out the new food source and latches onto it before you let go of the leaf.

Cow pen daisy and milkweed are prolific seed producers. In June, both already are producing seeds, ready for future plants. In the case of milkweed, the wind will carry the seeds and new plants will begin to pop up in a variety of places.

If you’d rather have a hand in where you want the new plants, grab the milkweed seeds after the pod begins to split open and rub the seeds around in the dirt where you want your new patch of plants to grow. If you do this in the heat of summer, keep the area moist for a couple of weeks.

Alternately, you can collect and store the seeds for later planting or to share. The white fluff in the milkweed pods is how the wind transports the seeds. It is very annoying. It floats around your face, in your nose and can travel throughout the house.

The best way to collect milkweed seeds is to (do this project outdoors) grab them with your hand and put them into a paper bag. Fold the bag closed at the top and give the bag a good shake for a few seconds. Then, cut off a small section at the corner of the bag and shake the seeds loose. The fluff will remain in the bag. Seeds are best stored long-term in paper envelopes, not plastic baggies.

Cow pen daisy seeds easily fall when brushed against and can be transported everywhere, especially hitching a ride on a lawn mower. Bushes can be dead-headed during the summer before going to seed. Bushes can be cut back in the fall and the “green mulch” with seed pods, can be distributed to an area where you want the bushes next year.