I mentioned with the start options you provided me that Kate no longer would pop to the front and grab the focus unless I set focus stealing to none. Today I noticed a side effect of that. I open my virtual machines in virtual desktop 2 and now whenever I do that the focus shifts to that virtual desktop immediately. Not what I want because I prefer them to open in the background as they take a minute or two to fully boot. Annoying. Yet another reason not to like Kate sessions.
There is a work-around:
In Control Center, Desktop, Window-Specific Settings; or from Kate's title bar context menu, select Advanced, Special window settings; and create an option for Kate. In the 'Workarounds' tab, set the focus stealing prevention level to None and leave the global setting at Low.
How in the world did I remember that? :)
Darrell