during the winter of 20/21 while my wife was doing laundry in the basement a car appeared in the basement window, crying...after she told me this I propped the garage door open just enough to let him in if he wanted and left him some food...eventually he made the garage his shelter and he was eating twice a day, so I built a couple of heated shelters inside the garage...shortly after I noticed another cat in the garage, a female, apparently his mate, well she had kittens, 5 of them...the male and female although they didn't like to be pet did not run from me and I was able to sit with them while they ate, the kittens were all healthy and two of them took to me right away...eventually they went their separate ways except for one female that clung to me, so for months that's the way it went...then in the summer of 21 she had 5 kittens...4 males, 1 female...she would wait till I sat down and then she would call them and they would come out to eat after which they all gathered in my lap...time went on and it was now Nov, well, one cold rainy night they all appeared on my from doormat, so I opened the door, they all ran in and they've been inside ever since...the mom and one kitten did run outside once when a storm loosened a basement window, mom came back when I called her, the kitten took a little more work since he was having fun playing in the rain...one of the reasons that I let them in was that the mother cat although extremely friendly was killing the local wildlife, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks and that didn't fly with me, the other reason was although I live in a farm town my road is a busy cut through between two main roads and I already dealt with having to pay a vet to treat a cat that was hit by a car near my house...