This fun story was written by one of our founding members in response to this week’s writing prompt.  Enjoy!

“Don’t you want to play?” the dog barked sinisterly.

“No!” the cat yowled as he ran away, fast as his legs could carry him, “I don’t like your idea of “play”!”

“Why not? I think its quite fun!” the dog replied with a mean glint in its eye.

The cat was nearly as large as the dog, but its legs were short.The chase continued for several minutes, the dog slowly gaining all the while.

A large tree came in sight and the cat’s heart soared. “I’m safe!” he thought to himself, then he looked back over his shoulder.

“Noooo!!!!” he yowled for the dog was close, far closer than he had believed. There was no way to make it to the tree in time.

“Only one chance, I’ve got to turn and fight!” the cat thought in panic.

Coming to an abrupt stop, the cat looked back at the dog with determination in his eyes. “This is a good place to make a stand, right in my own front yard.” he thought.

Seeing the cat stopping and turning to glare at him, the dog realized for the first time just how large the cat was. Doubt came into his mind and fear began to grow in his heart.

The cat spat in his face, saying “This is MY yard, you don’t belong here!”

The dog’s eyes widened in shock for no cat had ever spoke to him that way! The fear grew even more and his tail began to droop.

The cat began to advance on the bully of a dog who had been tormenting him. As he did so the dog began to back away from him and his courage began to grow. “Maybe I can do this!” he thought, careful not to say it out loud and let the dog find out how unsure he was.

The dog’s courage finally failed him completely and he started to run for home. With a gleeful yowl the cat gave chase; “How do you like it now that you’re on the receiving end?” he taunted.

“Go away! Leave me alone!” The dog barked in terror, not slowing down at all.

The cat just laughed derisively.

“Demon cat! Its a Demon Cat!” the dog howled as loud as he could between pants of fear and exhaustion.

Finally the dog reached its house, without even slowing down it ran in the door, hoping the cat wouldn’t follow.

It was a futile hope, the cat chased him right on through the house and out the back door. He didn’t stop until the dog was ready to drop where it stood.

Catching up to the dog the cat swiftly slashed him across the nose with its claws. “Leave me alone or next time I’ll shred you to pieces!” the cat hissed.

With a whimper the dog promised to not go near the cat again. Satisfied, the cat went home.

After he got inside he curled up on his favorite spot on the back of the couch next to the window.

His friend, Sunny the cockatiel, landed on his head and asked what had happened out there.

With a quiet laugh the cat replied, “The dog wanted to play, I said I didn’t want to but he insisted. He said it would be fun, and you know something? He was right, it was fun!”

A couple of weeks ago, I received a question from one of our blog readers on how to create columns.  Creating columns is useful for creating your own newsletter, brochure, or to experiment with how your work might look in a newspaper column.

Creating columns in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer is fairly straightforward.  First, go to the Format menu and select “Columns…”

As you can likely guess from the above picture, you can choose the number of columns (this image was taken from OpenOffice Writer, but there is a similar menu for Microsoft Word).

Once you’ve selected the number of columns you desire, you can then adjust the width as needed.  Here’s an example of  two columns with a 0.5″ spacing:

There are many more complex things you can do to change how the columns are displayed.

For example, you may want different column styles in different sections of your document.  In that case, you’ll want to insert a page break (Ctrl + Enter) and set up each set of columns separately (in the same manner as what was described above).

Good luck as you work on your articles.  If you’d like further details, please respond in the comments and I’ll either update this article or add a follow-on with more advanced features.