Mama cat

I'm heartsick today. There's this little cat. She moved in with her sibling a couple of years ago. Her brother disappeared, but she was still around. It looked like somebody was taking care of her, so I never thought anything of it.

About a month ago, I noticed that she was roughly the size of a cantalope. I was pissed that they didn't get her spayed, but I thought she still had an owner.

A few days later, Sergie mentioned that he had seen her. I was pissed that her owners were letting her outside when she was that pregnant. Sergie argued: she wasn't big at all.

Crap. One of two choices:

1) her owners were tossing her outside (no mama cat would leave) when she had kittens a few days old.

2) guess what the second is.

I've been looking for her, trying to see if I can follow her to her kittens and rescue the whole family. Since I now have a house, I can support everybody until the kitten are big enough for homes of their own. I saw her once: obviously nursing. I tried to follow her, but we ran into the neighborhood tom. She looked at him, tried to find a way around him only to be stymied by the fact that I was following her. She obviously didn't know what to do so I left.

I saw her this morning. Picked her up, fed her. (She's way too thin. She ate a whole tin of catfood and another 1/4 cup of dry food) Waited around. Put her on my balconey while I got my laptop from work. Her teats were just nursed, so I wanted to wait until she really needed to visit her kittens. Came back and worked until she wanted to go outside. Followed her outside. Snuggled for awhile. (Her fur was rough like nobody was petting her) She walks under a parked car - and disappears. I try tapping on the hood to see if that's where she'd gone, but no luck.

I'm really worried about her. On the other hand, she now knows where to get food so maybe she'll return on her own.