Big on Butterflies

Xena the Warrior Princess sports a butterfly mark on her leg, credentials certifying her as a feline entomologist. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

She has no formal training in the science of insects, but she can catch insects with the best of 'em. Plus, her credentials include a butterfly mark on her leg.

Xena the Warrior Princess is a rescue cat. We first spotted her outside a Costco store in the winter of 2000, the same year our son headed off to college to study computer science and mathematics.

A sign proclaimed "Free kitten!"

Not wanting a kitten, free or not (we already owned an adventuresome calico named Indiana Joan), we started to walk away.

But she was calling my name, this scrawny kitten dressed unabashedly in the same tuxedo colors our son wore while playing double bass for the Sacramento Youth Symphony's Premier Orchestra.

Coincidence? Probably. Fate? Perhaps. Serendipity? Certainly.

I thought about naming her "Free," but husband Jim didn't think that would be such a great idea. You just can't step out on the front porch and yell "Free! Free! Free!"

So Xena the Warrior Princess she became: half-warrior, half-princess, and all kitten. At first, Xena repeatedly performed sofa-to-chair leaps in the family room--antics that prompted friend Marilyn to observe: "I think her mother had an affair with a flying squirrel."

Then came the insects. The butterflies, the beetles (not the kind that play music) the honey bees, the sunflower bees, the carpenter bees and the moths.

(We will not talk about the roof rat and the flicker. They are not insects.)

Every night, or so it seems, our feline entomologist snares a hornworm  moth and eagerly shares it with us. UC Davis entomologist (and apiculturist) Eric Mussen says the mangled specimen (below) is  either a tomato hornworm or  tobacco hornworm.

At least it's not a flying squirrel.