A woman called in the RSPCA when her pet rats bred and infested her home.

Inspectors turned up to discover more than 100 rodents crawling all over the one-bedroom flat.

The woman initially owned just six rats but they started mating.

She gave them free run of her home in Hove and soon they multiplied. The rabble of rodents turned into a plague, taking over the flat.

She found she could not control them and called for help.

RSPCA Inspector Cora Moore opened the door of the flat to find it riddled with the rats.

They had crawled into kitchen cupboards and even found haven in the owner's bed.

She said: "They had free access to everywhere including her bedroom and all the kitchen cupboards. It was incredible to see so many rats running loose in a flat.

"They had been eating everything. It wasn't very pleasant."

Things got worse as she ventured further in.

She said: "It was very smelly. Rats are naturally incontinent. They won't go and find a corner, so anything they touched had urine over it as they just dribble it everywhere.

"It was a two-roomed airless flat so you can imagine the stench was pretty bad."

Insp Moore arrived at the flat yesterday morning and managed to catch the rats, ranging from tiny babies to fully-grown adults, and put them into her van.

They were taken to the RSPCA animal centre in Patcham, near Brighton, where they were being checked over, ready for rehoming.

Insp Moore said the excessive numbers serve as a warning to anyone who keeps pets and allows them to breed freely.

She said: "It could have been much worse. In a couple of months, she could have had double the number of rats running about the place."

Rats can produce a dozen babies in each litter and breed as many as ten times in their lifetime.

The RSPCA says rats make extremely good, friendly pets, enjoy being handled frequently and are very intelligent. They prefer to live in pairs as they thrive in company. Anyone wanting to offer a home to a pair of rats can contact the animal centre on 01273 554218.