Thanks for the replies. I didn't get a photo - just picked off the offending leaf and tossed it in the yard. I haven't seen any more, so it will remain a mystery. In other news, I now have 14 BST cats and a few eggs. I think I need a bigger boat ;)

That's the caterpillar of the American Dagger Moth. If you've found one, handle with care. It's one of the caterpillars with urticating cells (stinging spines). Cute, though.

Eeeewww, Gillian......I looked at the website you mentioned. I sure wish they didn't show such swarms of them ! I searched the pictures for my caterpillar, and didn't find it yet. I took a better look at the darn thing, cut the stem of the lily ( one I don't like anyway) and double bagged it and threw it in the garbage. I don't think I have the stomach to look again on that website or any others for a while. I guess I can do without knowing what it was. Thank goodness cashews are high in calories and not something a person really "needs" to eat to survive, as I doubt I'll be eating any of them anytime soon now, LOL! My stomach hurts. My "ick factor" tolerance is pretty low. Konrad - If you do a thread on caterpillars, please put a subject matter warning in your first post =:) I don't think I'll appreciate your pictures of them like I do all your other pictures =:)

Luckily I didn't touch the one I saw either. I'd been collecting daylily pods, and had different varieties of seeds stuffed in both pockets, and pods from other daylilies in each hand. I was hoping to get in the house before I forgot which was where ... and there was suddenly such a cute white caterpillar on a daylily leaf, and -- catlover that I am -- I wanted to pet it gently, but didn't have a hand free. And I probably would have figured out a way to free one finger, but I suddenly got a very definite feeling that I shouldn't! I had read about Puss Moth caterpillars, but didn't remember at the time. I don't have a photo of the one I saw in 2009, but I looked through Google Images that day, and saved the photo I thought was closest to what I had seen. Obviously I read somewhere that the 1st instar was white, but if that photo had a Latin name attached, I didn't write it down.