Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Bugs on milkweed, 1 by pennefeather

pennefeather wrote:
This is only the second year that I have grown milkweed. Last year, there were no pests on my milkweed. This year that aphids have found them. I decided to leave the aphids alone, since I had read that they don't hurt the catepillars, and I didn't want to use chemicals on the plants, but now I have another bug that I am not familiar with.

I'm not sure that these orange bugs are. Do they eat aphids? Are they eating the milkweed? And most importantly, will they harm the cats? I have at least a dozen catepillars that I need to protect.