[TheSownRose]

My cat likes to bring in all sorts of insects; I found this little guy on my dining room floor in the early hours of the morning. Collected him up into a pot so that no one would step on him, and 0130 hours saw me drilling holes into the lid. I originally planned to release him, but then thought it might be an interesting photographic project to take a picture of him every day and also hope to catch him emerging as a butterfly/moth.

However, to give him the best chance of surviving, I'd like to know what sort of caterpillar he is so that I can give him the preferred leaves and conditions. Last night, he had some lettuce and he had eaten quite a bit of it by this morning, but I don't know if he'd prefer something else...

SO... He's currently about an inch long, dark brown, slightly fuzzy but not ridiculously so (I had to look very closely), has some pale white-yellow dots on his body and two orange stripes on his head. There are photos of him in the spoiler below.

Thank you for any help.

Spoiler:

Show

To people who know me from the photography forum...

These are not examples of my best work, and won't form part of the project. Bad lighting conditions, a non-stabilised lens and no room to sent up a tripod, so instead the ISO was bumped up to try and get the shutter speed up a bit.

[Tycho]

Fascinating little creatures. I wonder what he's thinking. I wonder if he even thinks?

[sarahthegemini]

Just put him back in the bloody garden.