How to tell if a feral is pregnant?

Any tips? There's a feral cat that had been sleeping on my porch, it kept coming back and one day I had put some food out for my dog because she refused to come in and I caught the cat eating it, so after that I started giving the feral the canned food my cats didn't finish (my cats are picky so sometimes only eat the gravy)

I don't know if it's a male or female as it won't let me get close. I thought it might be spayed/neutered because it has the top half of one ear missing so I thought maybe it was ear-tipped like they do when the fix feral cats. However this is the only cat I have seen missing part of the ear and I don't know anyone in the area doing TNR... 

I had not seen it for the last week or two and today I was outside and had just gone inside and when I went and looked out my back door  the cat was standing there right in front of the door, looking in at me, which is weird because usually s/he only hangs out in the corner of the porch where s/he sleeps sometimes. Anyway I noticed s/he looks different, maybe fatter than before and I'm afraid it could be a female and pregnant. I am wondering if there's any way to tell, since I can't get near the cat? It seems like it would be really late in the year for a cat to have a litter?

If the top half is missing, it could very well be part of a TNR or been in a fight--could you send a picture?

She/he could have worms, too.

It is a little late in the year but then it has been unseasonably warm in some parts of the country.

You might try putting out a box with towels, etc in it--a "nesting box".  If you can trap the cat, you can also take it to the vets and they'll be able to tell pretty quickly.

And, thanks for feeding the kitty.

I don't have a current photo to show the weight gain, but here are two I took a while ago where you can kinda see the ear, it's hard to tell but it's basically missing the top part of the ear straight across--

in October (this was when she stole my dog's food, you can see my dog in the yard in the background):


last spring (I didn't see the cat around after this, until this fall)--


Wow I didn't realize until I went to look up these photos that the cat had been around this long... It disappeared during the summer after I took the one photo and then showed up again in the fall and started sleeping on my porch again.

I took a few more photos a couple of days ago but I haven't seen the cat in a few days now...
I'd also like to make a winter shelter but not sure the best place to put it or materials to use... I don't have a lot of money or I would just buy one because I am not good with making things...

I'm going to vote for fat cat. . .LOL. Several of my TNRed ferals are quite chubby, especially in the winter. It doesn't look like pregnancy fatness to me. Plus she probably would have been pregnant earlier this fall, if she is in fact a she and unspayed :tongue2:. So my vote is that either the cat is a spayed female or a male (neutered or not) and is simply fat.

I can't really make any guesses based on the ear because I once saw a cat who looked eartipped, a very tidy straight-across cut, but he was obviously an intact tom. So I guess it can happen naturally :dk:.