A husband's snoring saved his family from a blaze which killed their four pet cats.

Firefighters said the reason Gary Hanson, his wife Julie and their 17-year-old son Nick escaped in time was that Mr Hanson was sleeping downstairs to allow his wife a good night's sleep.

Their house had no smoke alarms but Mr Hanson was the first to smell smoke coming from the meter cupboard under the stairs and quickly woke the others.

He led them to safety before banging on their neighbour's door in Mile Oak Road, Portslade, at 4.30am to call the emergency services.

The family tried to reach their pet cats but the fire was so intense, they were beaten back by the heat and flames.

Firefighters arrived minutes later but the fire was so severe they could not get upstairs to the cats.

They rescued eight more cats from a lean-to on the side of the house and several animals in a cattery at the bottom of the garden were also found to be safe.

Mrs Hanson, 47, who runs Cat Welfare Sussex, which looks after the welfare of feral cats, was devastated to have lost the four.

She said her husband "was snoring so loudly he spent the night on the sofa.

"We had just a minute to get out. I just had a few seconds to grab our dog. I tried to go back for the cats but I couldn't. It is very sad.

"We have lost four of our pet cats and we are homeless.

"The firemen were brilliant. They managed to catch the feral cats and get them into baskets."

Mrs Hanson said all the feral cats were now in the cattery at the end of the garden and she would be going back to the house regularly to look after them.

"It's frightening. You just don't think it will ever happen to you. We just don't know where we are going from here.

"The house is totally uninhabitable. We are on to the insurers but there is just no way we can go back to it at the moment."

Sub Officer Andrew Gausdon, of Hove Fire Station, said: "They had no smoke detector but luckily the husband got the family out after smelling burning.

"There was a severe fire in the hallway which had burnt through the stairs.

"They were very lucky people. They had no smoke detector and we would have struggled to save them if the husband had not woken up."

A dozen firefighters battled for 15 minutes to get the blaze under control. They spent almost four hours at the semi-detached house clearing debris.

Mr Gausdon said: "We struggled to control the fire at first and we had great difficulty getting upstairs.

"The fire had been severe. It had died down a bit when we got there because they had shut the front door on the way out, starving it of oxygen, but it flared up again.

"The damage is very severe through the hallway and the whole house is heat and smoke damaged. The fire has broken the upstairs windows."

Mr Gausdon warned about the dangers of not having a smoke alarm and said it was vital homeowners fitted them to give them an early warning if fire broke out.