Is this a normal way for a Cattleya alliance orchid to bloom?
 

Last year my Blc. Hawaiian Leopard 'Mei-Ling' bloomed for the first time, from a normal-looking pseudobulb with one leaf.

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...waiian+leopard

Now, it's...doing something else? It has produced a long, thin growth with what looks like a bud at the top and no leaves. Is this in fact a bud? I know Cattleya type hybrids can have different numbers of leaves on different pseudobulbs, but is "none" one of the options? (In the pic you can see the dried stalk from the last bloom behind the new growth.)

From what I can see, it is a flower stalk with a flower bud. And the flower stalk appears to have sprouted (emerged) from the rhizome and did not come out of a pseudobulb and sheath, right?

If this is true --- then it certainly looks like a bud, and we can pretty much say that it is a flower bud, and it also appears that it's going to be on its way to flowering.

It's not a usual way for cattleya orchids for producing blooms. Some kind of stem cell thing going on maybe.

Wow! Maybe it has some C. walkeriana in its ancestry.

Looked it up... no walkeriana (you're right, that species does this sort of thing) But it is 1/4 B. nodosa, and for which the inflorescence arises from the base of a leaf.