‘I shared my house with 150 cats – and was told to get rid of them in two weeks’

I ’ve been infatuated with cats and kittens since I was about three or four years old. It’s part of my DNA. My mother wouldn’t let me have one at our family home in Madera, California, but I did get them later on once I got married at 23.

I ended up with three Abyssinians and a mutt cat. When I got divorced at 30, and moved to a five-bedroom property in Parlier in Fresno County – a place out in the country and on the water – I found myself single and without kids. That’s how it started.

I brought my four cats with me to the new house. This was 1992. My dad, meanwhile, asked me to find him two kittens because his Manx cats had died, so I went to a shelter in Sanger, a small town near me – and returned home with 15 of them, all of whom needed bottle feeding.

Once they were healthy, I took them back so they could be found homes. But I kept taking in more from the shelter – by the end of the year, I had rescued 96 cats and kittens . I was living with about 35 cats at any one time.

Soon, I took none back to the shelter and instead found them homes myself. I got involved in other rescues and, in 1993, I ended up with 35 extra cats living with me permanently along with my four original cats. We had five bedrooms – they were all over the place.

I decided to go and work for a vet to learn about cat health – seeing that I had so many. It was hard; I’d have to get up at 4am to take care of the 39 cats and then get to work at 8am before returning at 1pm to be with t.