Outdoor kittens without mother

Question
I just moved into a house and found a mother with 5 kittens.  The mother I beleive has passed away (not sure how) as I have not seen her and have been caring for her 5 week old kittens for the past week 1/2.  I found a home for one of the kittens, and 2 kittens I would like to keep as outdoor cats (fixed, vaccinations, etc...) as I cannot have any indoor cats (boyfriends allergies).  I am planning on feeding daily and making a cat house for the winter but a local no-kill shelter in which I am giving 2 kittens to said that because the mother died when they were young they will most likely not make it outdoors because they haven't learned to protect themselves by the mother.  I would really like to keep the 2 outdoors but not sure if that is the best option for them, even when I am feeding and taking care of them daily.

Answer
HI Andrea,

It is very good of you to take care of these orphans and make sure they are all spayed/neutered etc. I do agree with the rescue you contacted - young kittens have a hard enough time learning the dangers of outdoors let alone without their mother to show them the ropes. THese kittens would stand a very high chance of death from the many dangers - cars, dogs, wild animals, disease and so on. Cars being the worst one.

However it can be very hard to find good homes for kittens so seeing as you are a responsible and caring person, having taken them in, I'd like to encourage you to consider building them an enclosure of some type. Please look at the following article for examples some of these are just methods of adapting a fence to help keep cats in your yard and stray cats out, while others are full enclosures. A full enclosure is safest and could be built with a shelter inside, and some of them are large enough to have room for a patio for people, so you could enjoy the company of your cats while sitting outside.  Take a look:

http://catnet.stanford.edu/articles/enclosures.html


This link is on the page above but I wanted to highlight it because her setup is so great:

http://www.sallyscathouse.homestead.com

Shelters can be supplied with fresh straw every few months to provide a warm and cozy place to sleep for the cats.

If the locl rescue is willing to help you screen potential adopters for the other kittens, I highly recommend working with them. Detecing a good home is so much harder than anyone thinks before getting a lot of experience! If they seem too picky, that is a good thing - its hard to be too torough or picky when it comes to choosing a home for kittens you grow to care a lot about.

Best wishes and good luck!