The remains of a UK woman who has long been dead has been found by police albeit in a very sad state. If only her pet cats can explain to authorities, they would surely say they did what they had done because they needed to survive.

On the day the decomposing body of Janet Veal was found, bits and pieces of body organs were already lost because her pet cats had eaten them.

And the possibility of her whole body being totally eaten up is not remote had neighbors not sounded the alarm to police after noticing the old lady's mail has already been piling up on her front yard.

Young feral cat eating a cottontail rabbit.

Police who responded to neighbors' calls told an inquest Ms Veal's house bore scenes of chaos. The house was "so cluttered with garbage that it was difficult to see the floor," police said.

The body of 56-year-old Ms Veal was discovered in the kitchen being "gnawed and eaten" by her remaining cats. Police also found bodies of several animals, including a dog and some cats.

Police theorised Ms Veal could have been dead for as long as three months before her body was discovered. Since she lived alone, there was nobody else to care for her pets when she died.

Suffice to say, rather than die to starvation, the animals ate what was available and easily accessible - Ms Veal's decomposing body.

"These animals had been, the officer thought, confined in these two rooms downstairs for what may well have been a period of many weeks, stretching quite possibly into several months."

There was also "no indication otherwise and no suggestion ... that she had been in any way attacked by the animals while she was alive," Southampton Coroner Keith Wiseman said.

The reason of her death was of natural causes.

"Given the background history and findings I am prepared to find on the balance of probabilities this was sadly a natural death that led to really very untoward consequences because of the inability of Ms Veal to get any assistance for herself and to be confined in the way that she was in this property with a number of animals that had not been fed for quite a long period of time," Wiseman concluded.