THE bodies of about 100 cats, some stuffed behind radiators and inside fridges, were found inside a flat, the RSPCA said yesterday.

Inspectors made the discovery after they were called to the flat, in the Beechwood area of Leeds, by a cleaning company last week.

As well as the corpses, the floors throughout the property were coverered with about 2ft of human and cat faeces.

RSPCA inspector Lynsey Harris, who found the animals, said: "I was horrified by what I discovered.

"The smell was absolutely sickening. It is unbelievable, but it appears that someone may have been living among these corpses.

"What on earth was going on here?"

She said she found about 100 cats, including animals that had been stuffed behind radiators, crammed into a chest freezer and inside an upright fridge freezer - next to human food.

An RSPCA North spokeswoman said electricity to the property had been turned off for some time and the bodies were in an advanced stage of decomposition, making post-mortem examinations impossible.

The spokeswoman said: "We've never come across anything quite as horrific as this.

"There's very little we can do because we don't have a definitive name for who's responsible and we can't tell whether the animals died in the property or were brought in after they'd died.

"It's highly unlikely they died of natural causes, given how they were found, but we can't rule that out so our hands are tied at the moment.

The RSPCA were contacted by the cleaning firm A-Z Environmental Services, whose staff took 11 binliners of bodies and body parts from the property.

Mike Marsh, company manager, said he met the occupant of the flat during a survey visit a week before the cleaning began.

He said: "The strange thing was there was this poster on the walls which said he'd won first prize in a competition for looking after cats."