When we found the "perfect" house with a fenced-in yard for the dogs, we weren't expecting a cat to come with it. It just worked out that way.
She just showed up, so we started feeding her, letting her inside, petting her. The dogs were surprisingly unaffected by her presence. I noticed she had white feet like the cat I had when I was little. I'd named him Sox because of those feet, so she became known as Soxy Lady.
It hadn't been long since she'd adopted us that I noticed she looked peculiarly fat. Pregnant even. A trip to the vet verified my suspicion, so it was actually an unwed homeless mother who adopted us.
I woke up early for some reason on August 1, 1999. Soxy was up also, meowing at me as I took care of some bathroom business. As I was finishing up, a very unusual, painful-sounding meow came out of Soxy's mouth and suddenly there was something hanging out of her posterior.
I scooped her and the messy first-born up and carried them to the large cage we had set up for Soxy's maternity leave. Soxy (understandably) continued to make some painful noises, and one by one, her children emerged.
After a few had been born, she rested a bit and licked everyone clean. She finished up, bearing kitten number six, about five hours or so after the first had plopped out in the bathroom floor.
I was honored to have been present, as this was the first birth I'd ever witnessed.
We kept two of her children, P-Funk and Holden, giving the others away at the standard six weeks of age. P-Funk looked almost exactly like his mom, but was killed by car before he was a year old. Holden is still with us, enjoying country life.