Like most cats, sleeping in comfort is a top priority for Maysie.
Opinion
JUDITH SAYS: My beautifully clean kitchen floor is no longer. Maysie arrived for breakfast sans her gumboots and now there are dirty cat prints all over it.
If I'm honest, there's skid marks down thebathroom wall below the window Maysie likes to jump in.
Sometimes when I'm going to bed I'll find her sitting on the vanity waiting for me to do my teeth as she's fascinated by the running water.
It's futile leaving the bath plug on the edge of the bath. She has a sixth sense about that and will rush in to restore her slot car to where it belongs – in the tub. There'll be much bashing and crashing as she does it.
Maysie was meant to be called Maeve, after Maeve Wiley - one of the main characters in Sex Education. But the guy I was seeing at the time couldn't say Maeve. He kept saying May and I thought that was too short, so Maysie was born.
Maysie and her siblings had been put in a sack and dumped on the side of a road near Eketahuna and left to die. I can barely type these words, such is the horror and fury I feel that someone would do that. Thankfully, a passing cyclist heard their cries and they were rescued.
The vet nurse who went to pick them up that day showed me a photo she took. I couldn't look at it other than to register they barely looked like kittens they were so dehydrated and malnourished.
Maysie has a whole playbook of facial expressions from young and playful to serious and ancient. But my favourite physical feature is the tip of her tail, which is much darker than the rest of her. It's like she dipped it in a can of stripped paint.
MAYSIE SAYS: There's lots of things I don't like about Mummy, but typing too much hurts my paws so I'll limit myself to two jots.
Sometimes she tells me I've had enough to eat. I mean, seriously, who does she think she is? My mother? I'll decide when I've had enough to eat, thank you very much.
She's worried my doctor is going to comment on my wobbly bits and say she's a bad mother, but I'll bribe the doc with a pot pouri of personally ripped leaves. Who could resist such a gift?
Secondly, she yells at me when I shred bills, legal documents and precious memories. She says I don't get enough exercise but then when I do boxcat she gets cross.
But I do love her. We're a team and I hate it when she leaves the house.
When she's sick or sad, I get super close to her and purr extra loud. When she's done too much, which is most days, I sit on her chest so she has to rest.
People have troubling spelling my first and last names. They usually get my middle name, Belle, correct, but think it's Maisie Lacey.
Mummy's last cat was called Bella Boy Lacy. People spelt his name right, but they kept using the wrong pronoun. Mummy wanted a cat called Bella and she wasn't going to let a small detail like gender get in the way.
Mummy has a photo of Bella as a kitten on the side table in the lounge, next to a box containing Bella's ashes. Out of respect to my fellow feline, I don't go near that table.
At 16, Bella was diagnosed with mouth cancer and he had to be put down. Mummy says it was like killing her child but he was trying to cough the cancer out and couldn't go on like that.
Bella taught Mummy how to be the best cat mother and for that I'm super grateful.