// BBC ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS — MODA & SOCIETÀ
Holly Humberstone: People can't connect to a pop star who's 'too polished'
Holly Humberstone says she was having an identity crisis on a weekly basis
You might know her as a pop star, endorsed by everyone from Taylor Swift to Sam Fender, but Holly Humberstone has a secret double life.
In her spare time, the singer-songwriter is literally a cat burglar.
"We've stolen one of our neighbours' cats by accident," she laughs, in a Zoom call from her fixer-upper in New Cross, south-east London.
"He's a tiny little black cat who's come into our garden and simply chosen us."
Under the slightest scrutiny, however, her story crumbles like a biscuit in a hot cup of tea.
"OK, we've been coercing him into the house with treats," she admits. "He's just so cute.
"But we're not trying to keep him. We literally push him out every night."
Humberstone's excuse for this feline felony is that, last year, her parents sold her childhood home in Lincolnshire, external and moved to Wales – taking her pets with them.
One, a cat called Tsuki, had even been immortalised in the song Lucy as a confidante who listens to her problems but "never judges".