Took in young Stray Femaie cat & 2 weeks later had 4 kittens

We took in a stray cat, she was very loving and gentle, because she was a stray she was very thin, she seem to adapt very easily to being confined to 1 room no problem using the litter box and ate constantly. We noticed she gained weight really quickly and did not give it a second thought because we assumed that she was just really hungry from not being fed properly.....but 2 weeks later she had 4 kittens....she seem to be very protective over her kittens. Understandable...but we have other animals and over the days she became extremely protective so we put up gates on the doorway so our other animals could not enter. One day, I didn't completely close the gate and she went completely crazy....attacking out dog, myself and my daughter, clawing us all very badly. We managed to get her back in the room with her kittens and just minutes later she was fine, feeding her kittens as if nothing had happened. Okay we did decide that we would have to give her away but before the week was over, she did another attack on me and my daughter very badly attacking us. Inspire of our injuries, I feel terrible that we had to take their to the animal shelter. Was this a normal behavior? we did keep the kittens because the shelter told us they would put the kittens to sleep and I just couldn't bare that we had to get rid of the mother who was just adorable, I just couldn't get rid of the kittens. They are 5 weeks old and just barely learning to drink water on their own, I have not idea how we are going to feed them. We are planning to find good homes for them also. I don?t know if we did the right thing. I am such an animal lover that I feed so bad for the mother cat.

Answer by Kate
I'm sorry to hear that you have given away the mother cat before the kittens were completely weaned, which is around 8 weeks. Unfortunately the kittens will miss some vital lessons from their mum and as you say you will have to take the mothers cats place and wean the kittens yourself. I have a web page about weaning kittens which I think you should find helpful, here is the page

http://www.our-happy-cat.com/kitten-weaning.html

What is done is done and so the best thing you can do now is to give the kittens all the love and care you can

The mother cats behavior was quite normal especially for a stray/feral cat. Unfortunately they can be very tough to learn to live with and they never really become as domesticated as we would like. It is likely that she would have always been a very distant cat.

best wishes Kate