Bless you for being concerned and wanting to help....We care for 3 semi feral cats and have put an igloo on our front porch with blankets...On our back porch, which they seem to like better, we have an old TV console, minus the TV, and fixed it with straw, blankets etc. I noticed, they do sit under a chair on the porch, so I put a couple of blankets over it and also put a piece of wood sheeting on the floor to keep them off the cement and covered it with blankets...But the main thing we do have is a Snuggle Safe, in fact, just bought another one...I highly recommend these things. (I don't work for Snuggle safe)....These things stay warm for hours....Good luck

Wow! You've got a lot going on there! I'm sure that good karma will come back in spades.

I'm kinda surprised no one else responded to this. Does no one do anything, or is it not worth mentioning?

I don't want to encourage ferals to hang around the apartment, but I (figuratively) shudder to think what they're doing in a snowstorm that dumped 20 inches in 2 days.

When I lived in the city I did provide shelter for stray everything. I am now rural and there are plenty of barns around to keep them warm and fed.

We care for 2 feral cats. They have a shelter (link to instructions included), its in a very safe and secluded part of our yard. We change the straw in it seasonally. The female, Baby, had 2 litters of kittens in there before we were able to catch her and get her spayed. The male, Buddy, we caught and neutered also. They seem to use it when the weather is really cold or wet. They have so many places they go, including a neighbors shed, and under a large but cozy covered area by another neighbors garage. They're very resourceful cats.

They're fed and watered daily, and hang pretty close to our house and the surrounding neighbors. They come very close to us, Buddy will take food from our hands, Baby is more skittish, keeping her distance, but she does meow at me a lot when I talk to her.

There is a feral colony on the street behind us, and Baby and Buddy seem to keep those cats away, I see strange cats come around but they quickly run them off of their territory.

The things I've read suggest that straw is better than blankets, and if you possibly can, please catch, neuter and release, this helps keep those colonies down. I had a conversation with my local animal control officer a few years ago about stray dogs, and he told me most people aren't aware of it, but that we had a much worse problem with cats in our community than dogs. Buddy actually was a neighbors house cat, she put him out when he peed in her house. Of course, she didn't neuter him, and likely didn't provide him with clean litter. By the time we started feeding him, several years had passed, I think he was with the colony behind our street, he was quite wild by then. What a shame. What that neighbor did to her dogs was worse, but I won't add that long story to this thread. Some people just shouldn't have pets.....

Here is a link that might be useful: Feral cat Shelter Plans

A cardboard box will be more wind- & rain-proof if you slide a big garbage bag around it & tape its edges to the sides of the box.

I used to have a couple of extra "dogloos", the igloo-shaped insulated plastic dog houses, that I filled with hay every autumn.

I kept one under the eaves on the south (warm) side of the house & one near the back fence.

I also piled up autumn leaves around the outside to camouflage them, to make them smell more natural, & to add a little more insulation.

I'm going to thread swerve to talk about wild birds...
(you don't want me to talk about feral cats :-) )

Its an old wives tale that feeding birds will hamper their migration. Migrating birds in the past, relied on undisturbed habitat, millions of acres of wetlands, meadows and forests for food and shelter during migration. Habitat destruction has significantly reduced and almost eliminated many of the feed and shelter areas for migrating birds. So leaving your feeder out for birds during migration can help them make the trip.

Of course, feeding birds does attract other wildlife, such as mice, squirrels and chipmunks... and feral cats... so if you hate to encourage animals, you may want to skip the bird feeders.

I have a small feral cat colony in my yard (6/7). They live under the neighbors house and mine. I am planning on taking the old Igloo we have and put some pine needles down for warmth (straw if I can get hubby to get a bale or two). I am also planning on asking hubby to build a "shelf" in there so the kitties can get up a little higher off the ground. My only problem is where to put the dog house. I don't want it to near the house because of our dogs and I don't want it too far to attract other critters.

jpw, I read somewhere that the birds act according to the length of the days.

no matter how "unseasonal" the weather pattern is,
no matter how much sugar water we keep out for the hummingbirds,
when it's time to head south, the birds hook up their winnebagos & leave us til next year.

I have a couple of feral cats in my barn, and others that seem to visit between the different barns on the road. I put boxes in the barn with old comforters in them.

The cats stay in those boxes when it's cold, but actually burrow into the hay in the barn when it gets really cold. One of them popped out of the hay one day when I was grabbing some to feed my donkeys, startled the heck out of me! LOL!