Ok in need of some good advice and this was such a helpfull website with are previous out taking. We had a stray cat have a litter of kittens under our deck about two weeks ago. I never was a big fan of cats since i am pretty allergic to them but ofcourse my wife and i had to help so we started feeding the mom, who was very very tame will sit in our laps eat out of our hands clearly was a run away or a drop off. she is even good with our dogs likes to play with our puppy. Anyways since i am allergic i dont want them in the house and I noticed a raccoon sniffing around here we feed mom cat the other morning when i got off work. I felt horrible since i figured it had to have gotten the kittens but to our relief and surprise momma showed up couple days later with kittens all 5 under are table on our back deck now which no raccoon dare come with our 3 dogs but she braved it so I gave in and got out one of our old large ferret cage, forgive me best thing i have at moment took to our garage put momma and kittens in but mom prefers to stay out of the cage.
My big question is should i make momma stay over night in cage with the kittens???? she does go in for awhile with them but hops out everytime we come to check on her about every two hrs except at night which we let her out and she sleeps in old dog bed by the cage. I am sorry the garage and is big and has dog cat door to our back deck and yard and it is heated so by no means will they get cold since my big dogs (watch dogs german shepard and boxer stays out there too and doesnt seem to mind the cat i caught them sleeping together yesterday. the cat still has claws found that out when tried to pick up kittens to soon so i hope it will be fine in the garage??? Can cats keep thems selves cool? I put a fan out there for during the day and again at night i keep it heated, its not cold here yet so what is a good temp for the cats to be at its kept at 70???
and we are feeding momma blue canned wilderness food since they said dry food is bad and i also give her the frozen raw primal or natural instincts food since they say is the best and she does love it. Is that ok??? we have a vet appointment for momma tuesday to make sure she is good??? any advice would be wonderfull!!!!!!!!

I think you are doing an amazing job. I have no experience with this but my instinct would be to continue to let momma go in and out of the cage as she pleases even at night.

However, by the time you read this reply you will have been to the vet with her so I imagine the vet would have advised you on this. (What did he/she say?) Is momma good?

Thanks for so much concern to that cat family, everything seems in order but how about the kitties? Does the dogs bothered to them?