Landlord wants me to get rid of some of my cats

Ok I've lived in the same apartment with my family since 2010ish(majority of which moved out, so now its just me(23) and my mom(40 something)). We currently have 2 dogs and 7 cats(and to my knowledge our landlords have no issues with them). 6 of our cats have been with us since 2020ish, my older dog has been with us since we first moved in. We just got our kitten and puppy this past may(again, landlord was fine with them)

When we first moved in, our original landlord didn't care if we had pets and our papers state we can have them. Fast forward to 2018~19, and we got a new landlord. After talking to them, they said they dislike pets but wasn't going to make us get rid of them/stop having them(no change to our papers). They didn't stop any of their tenants from having/getting pets(one of our neighbors have 2 dogs and a few cats as well) Fast forward to now, my mom told me this morning that the landlord stopped by (idk when, as I'm home 90% of the time and didn't hear any knocking) and saw some of our cats in the window. He said there are to many and we need to get rid of some. This genuinely confuses me because he hasn't had an issue since he first learned about them and it seems out of the blue. We pay our rent on time(sometimes in advance) and don't mess with our neighbors (we're friendly and don't start fights normally, the only fight we've had was handle within a week of it starting and nothing has sparked any new fights). Us and our neighbors don't normally get our landlord involved and settle things on our own. I am thinking of talking to them later to see if they had a noise issue or if the landlord made any comments on their pets.

Now I am autistic (landlord knows this and seems to actively avoid speaking to me about any issues despite both me and my mom saying that I need to know whats going on in my own home) and have grown super attached to ALL of these animals. I get extremely defensive over them, seeing as they are the only reason I've lived through college and through family drama that lead to the majority of my family moving out. I have no idea how to pick who stays and who goes, and I genuinely don't know if I could even mentally handle rehomeing them because they are such a big part of my schedule/life. I don't know anyone that could take them in and I hate the idea of handing them over to a shelter as a few are bonded to each other and I wouldn't want to separate them. He also didn't specify how many, so idk what he wants exactly.

I need advice on how to handle this because my mom just keeps saying we'll talk about it later and its eating me alive thinking about it.