baby, it's cold outside

Wilmington, NC made the Weather Channel's news item for having the coldest start to the year on record. We are by no means the coldest place, but we are not prepared for this kind of cold.  I have watched the birds and squirrels fighting over the food from our feeders and slide across the unexpected coat of ice on our birdbath.  I have been so worried about our porch cat.  We have two indoor cats (Lilo and Stitch) and one wild corgi (Sandy) and one cat that shows up every so often on our porch.  Porch cat appears to be feral.  It has one ear tipped and seems to be fixed(no one has been crazy enough to try to get close enough to know.)  Porch cat only shows up when the weather is bad.  We won't see porch cat all summer long then cool weather will come and there it sits.  When I drive off to take the kids to school, Porch is sitting at the front door, staring at it.  If we see the cat we will bring it a can of food.  We won't leave any food out on the front porch unattended because we have too many other critters here.  A couple of weeks ago, before the cold snap, Porch showed up painfully thin.  I was worried that it might be sick and didn't want to expose kids or pets to anything funky.  Fortunately Porch just needed some food.  We have figured out that Porch is sleeping in the roof of my husband's workshop and wandering around to the front of the house a couple of times a day for food.  This crazy cat that used to run away from us now greets us as soon as we open the door.  We were afraid that Porch might not survive the cold weather, too many people and pets lose their lives due to extreme weather.  Thankfully the weather has started to warm up.  Now the question is how long will Porch be around?