Running out of food :(

Poor little kitties! They are down to gnawing on the stumps of this fennel plant. I went by several places on the way home today and nobody has any fennel, or parsley for that matter.
Next year I'm going to have to grow lots more.

The big guys in this photo will probably make it. They can actually go ahead and pupate early and turn in to smaller butterflies. The two babies though are in trouble. You will find one opposite of each of the big guys. That's what the first instar looks like, brown with a white band.
They are Eastern Black Swallowtail cats by the way.

Did you find anything for them to eat??????? Or will they eat the stalk. They look close to maturity, maybe they will make it...

No, I haven't found them any food yet. I have more fennel and parsley and rue growing in the garden, but all the plants have lots of cats. I don't think I would help out by over-populating another plant.
Unless I can find more plants, nature is going to have to decide who survives.
The big guys are actually eating the stalks, that's how they turned in to stumps.

Did you try supplementing with store bought herbs, like from the grocery store? Of course you will just be in the same boat again in a few weeks. :(

I suppose that there are other things that they could eat. I am sure they will crawl over to something that will work.

Have you looked in the produce section of the grocery store? Sometimes they sell live herbs as well as freshly cut ones. I would think if you have a small bud vase you could put the herb stems in the vase and keep them alive forr the cats to feed on. I sure hate watching caterpillars starve! I had white peacock cats one year on my bacopa (water hyssop) and they ate it down to little stubs and were crawling all around looking for more food. I took them to the butterfly guy at the local farmer's market. He just recently gave me two chrysalides of the White Peacock. They both seem to have just flown away--my bacopas are still growing like weeds!

I don't know where they are, they crawled off to somewhere. I raised some cats inside last year, but decided not to do it this year. The reason for it is that I work all day and sometimes it's late before I'm home. Last year two of my cats hatched on a weekday when I was gone and had no flowers all day.
They seemed to be okay when they went out, they could fly and they found flowers. It just didn't seem right.
I guess I should try to make some kind of outdoors netting cage that is large enough to hold pots of flowers.