Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Sick or morphing caterpillars?, 0 by beckygardener

beckygardener wrote:
I ask this question because it has been my experience that when my cats are releasing a liquid substance from either their mouth or bowels, it is not a good sign.

But, I can't be sure. Sometimes when one of my cats does this, they do seem to recover. Or at least they seem to go on to thrive, grow, and morph.

But I have also had butterflies that never emerged or were deformed. I didn't keep careful note of which cats these were. Were they the ones that appeared sick earlier in their cat stage? I don't know.

This is something that I deal with constantly with some of the cats I find and/or raise. And it seems that it can affect ALL cats, not just some species. It is either a parasite or a virus causing the cats to be sick, from which they often die. Here is a link to an interesting website about this:

http://www.livemonarch.com/advanced.htm

My latest observations:

I have been having horrible luck with Sulphur cats lately. When I find them, they are already infected with something. Not sure if it is a parasite or a virus. But I did find a bug in one of the small containers (that was NOT there originally) that I was raising a cat in. And there was a hole in the dead cat's body. So it looks like a parasite got that one and it had emerged from the cat's body. But other times it is a virus. The symptoms seem to be very similar when the cats are first sick.

What to do about it? I strongly recommend isolating the sick cat immediately. If it IS a sick cat, you don't want the disease/parasite spread to healthy cats. I wonder if this is why labs raise cats individually in separate cages?

I'd like to hear what your experiences have been with this issue. It might be good to exchange observations concerning this and what to look for or signs that something my be wrong.