Nicholas is ten months old this May. He’s grown bigger overall than both of the girls, and is as long as Beau, but not as beefy. He’s still the skinny neighborhood kid of a cat, running around and running everybody else a bit ragged. When he wants to hide from everyone he’s made mad that day, he tends to find a spot under one of the deck pieces of furniture, like this one. It’s not that the other cats are vengefully trying to hunt him down, it’s just that Nicholas instinctively seems to know when he should literally lay low for a while. Everybody calms down and then Nicholas reappears.

Nicholas is the last of the “babies.” Pretty soon he’ll pass his first year of life, and then he’ll begin to mellow and calm down even more. I’ve already watched it happen to the first two generations, now I get to watch it happen with Nick.