How I came to have 11 cats in my house

How many cats is too many cats? I can't tell you exactly, but a couple of weeks ago, I had 11 cats living in my terraced house. And I can say with confidence this is absolutely, definitely too many.

- Hannah Al-Othman

Hannah Al-Othman, her husband, Michael, and some of their cats. Left, ginger Phillip and, above, one of the second litter of kittens that the couple took in.

At time of writing, I still have seven. Somehow my home has, against my will and better judgment, become something of a cat rescue centre, and an illustration of what Cats Protection has described as a growing crisis of abandoned felines.

This all started last summer when I convinced my husband, Michael, that we needed a kitten as company for our grumpy old ginger boy Phillip, which would bring our number of cats to the completely socially acceptable number of two.

We contacted a local rescue centre, and they in turn convinced us we didn't need one kitten, we needed two. Taking two, they said, would mean they would entertain each other; it would be less work for us. The fact that they were overrun with kittens they needed to rehome was, I'm sure, merely coincidental.

So, Joanne and Susan (combined with Phillip, they're named after the Human League) came to live with us; their mother had been found heavily pregnant a few weeks before, by some bins in an alley, and taken to the rescue centre. And we were more than content with our Feline League.

Until one day in September when a neighbour, Viv, came knocking on our back door. She'd found some kittens in the back alley and didn't know what to do.

We live in Levenshulme, Manchester, where terraced houses back on to alleyways. We have always had the odd stray, and our neighbours look out for them by leaving out food and beds. But in recent months, the problem had grown from the odd stray into something of a cat colony. Viv had gone to take out the blanket from a carrier to wash it and found three five-day-old black kittens inside.