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Well here is the deal, me and my boyfriend discussed a little about christianity and how it started well we got to the fact that god wanted us to follow him and read the the bible well my boyfriend had me a little puzzled when he said that christianity started from the jews? is that possible...plz help im searching for answers

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1995 Second Place Winner, Student Short Story.

When we moved to Colorado at Christmas, something got left behind.

A Cool Cat Story

Bret Schlisner

My brother, Grant, shouted to me, "Bret! Get out here now! Two more mattresses means two more trips outside for your lazy self. Let's go, slacker."

We were moving to Colorado, but I was lounging on a mound of torn-down drapes with Mephistopheles, the most adorable cat imaginable. Nicknamed Stophie, he nestled against my ears, purring and digging his claws into my chest. His neck fur squished in my fingers, and he drooled on my chin.

My stepmother sat dumping chestnuts into the fire in rhythm with Karen Carpenter's annoying rendition of "Jingle Bells." Dad was hastily gluing together his Kmart special golf club with Shoe Goo.

I glanced out the window. Three warehouses on wheels blocked my view of the North Carolina horizon. As I got up, Stophie rubbed at my heels and followed me to the moving trucks.

As I hoisted the mattresses into the truck, my stepmom's evil cat, Scar, popped out of the U-Haul, hissing and snarling. Scar's breath seeped from his nose like cigar smoke. He lunged for Stophie.

I thrust my icy boot toward Scar's ribs, but both cats flashed behind the doghouse. Stophie was my friend, and no one could hurt him without my retaliating. But the Christmas Eve spirit, along with the subzero temperature, finally dragged me back into the house.

The fire was fizzling. Leftover chestnuts lay sprawled in the scattered ashes, so I fished some out, slumped on another pile of drapes, and gnawed a nut. Stophie's coolness took over my thoughts.

Stophie is the snowboarder of the cat world. He's smooth. Admired. So other pets dislike him? That makes me love him. He doesn't blow tantrums or hiss or hide for three weeks. He's personable. If Hindus were really reincarnated as animals, Stophie would be Gandhi.

My thoughts randomized as my eyes creaked shut . . . Colorado . . . snowboards . . . cats . . . red ping-pong balls on a green table . . . Christmas . . . what in the world is a sugarplum?

I awoke to the sound of the Carpenters' "Sleigh Ride" booming through the house. Sitting down on some more drapes in the kitchen, I chomped on a stale doughnut. My dad mumbled something about the beauty of Karen Carpenter's voice.

Something was weird, though (other than the fact that it was Christmas morning and the house was naked). Stophie wasn't digging his claws into my skin this morning like he usually does when he wants a handout.

My stepmom threw me something edible and called it a sugarplum. At that moment, determining the difference between a plain old plum and a sugarplum distracted me from Stophie's whereabouts.

My brother yelled, "Let's go! Come on! Come on! Come on! Colorado is waiting." He dragged me to the truck we would drive, sealed the last U-Haul sliding door, waved 'bye to Dad (who would come a few days later with my stepmom), and punched it for I-70.

That morning both of my sisters had announced pregnancy as their Christmas present to us (wow, thanks). So our future unclehood was just one of the million topics we covered on our two-day journey to snowboard country.

When we got to Kansas, I realized I had left my toothbrush on the sink. Aw, man. I punched the dashboard, delighting in the pain--forgetting about my forgetfulness.

I forced Grant to stop at a phone.

"Dad, I forgot my toothbrush. Will you snag it on your way out?"

"Sure. Uh, did you bring Stophie with you?" Dad asked.

"Of course not. There's not enough room for a box of tissues in this truck. Did you lose him? You find him. And my toothbrush." (Dad loves to take orders.)

"Would you check the back of the truck?" he insisted.

" 'K. Find him, Dad. Later."

I slammed the phone and felt my heart sink to my belly. Pets in the North Carolina boondocks disappear only once. An owl snatched one of our other cats a few weeks earlier. Someone saw a cougar in our backyard the day after one of our dogs disappeared. Those pets were nice to look at and stroke, but next to Stophie, they were just space-fillers. Stophie mattered.

We knew he wasn't in the truck, but Grant and I opened the back hatch anyway and pleaded to the furniture, "Here, kitty, kitty." The silence that met us seemed to whisper, "Stophie's gone . . . Stophie's dead . . ."

Grant and I stayed silent for about 700 miles. Our pant legs would never again be soaked by Stophie's drool.

We pulled into a weigh station for a flyby, and I asked Grant, "I wonder how important Stophie was to God? Now what do we do if we need a happytime?"

"Ski," snapped Grant. "Don't worry about it. We're all gonna die someday anyway." He was emerging from the denial stages of Stophiedeath realization.

Grant's retort irked me until the mountains rose into view. Still 100 miles from Denver, we admired the peaks. Snowboards danced in my head as I once again zonked out into a vision of falling into a giant sugarplum.

"Woo-hee. Twelve below at Stapleton. Whoa, Nellie, I hope yer bringin' yer doggies in tonight," wailed some DJ on the truck's AM radio, rousing me from my nap. "It's guhnna be cowlder than a doorless outhouse for the restatha muhnth. And now, here's Garth Travis Billy-Bob Tritty with his latest hit, `Born With a Lasso 'Round My Neck,' on Denver's audio rodeo, KHIC."

"Are we there yet?" I asked Grant.

"Nope. I called our real estate agent, and she said it's been too cold, so they don't plan on finishing our house for a couple more weeks."

I paused for another view of my eyelids. Lame. Oh well, I guess I can subsist at Motel 6 for a few days.

Dad and my stepmom arrived at the motel three days later, with no toothbrush and no Stophie.

Every day my stepmom called our neighbor in North Carolina to ask if Stophie had shown up yet. Every day she went out to the trucks and called for Stophie, returning with a frown and a frostbitten nose. Every meal she prayed for Stophie--not the food. She was going nutty.

The final work on our house got delayed week after week. Motel 6 filled in as our home, and we found our only sliver of happiness anymore in Wheel of Fortune.

When Dad prayed for Stophie during his benediction at church, I knew he'd gone wacko.

"Dad," I said, "what is God gonna do? Yank him out from the bowels of a cougar and hire a stork to deliver him to our doorstop? He's gone. The cat is gone."

"Bret, he's human. I'm calling 7-Eleven for a missing person's report."

Wacko.

On January 17 the weather turned warm enough for the builders to pound the finishing touches on our house. The U-Hauls had sat, fully loaded, in the motel parking lot for three and a half weeks. We drove them "home" and began unloading with my uncle's help.

Out came the mattresses, drapes, and everything but my toothbrush. I unloaded Stophie's scratching post, and my stepmom wailed and gnashed her teeth. My dad held a tissue up to her nose as my uncle and I trudged up into the truck for another couch before unloading the piano.

Frost melted on the inside of the truck. Snow pelted us. Breath crystals clouded my vision, turning my thoughts back to sugarplums for an instant. My uncle grumbled orders to me, but my sugar plumdream was just too good. Now the plum was faintly meowing to me. Wow. A vision.

My uncle stopped grunting and stooped down on his knees.

My mind popped back to reality, and I squawked, "Oh, so you're trying to lie down on the job. Some helpful uncle you are."

"Shut up and listen down here."

It sounded just like the sugarplum to me. I listened closer. It definitely was not a sugarplum. A vile smell wafted into our nostrils. I whispered to my uncle, "Did I tell you about our cat that died?"

"No, but your stepmom asks me about seven times a day to pray for something called `Stophie,' so I figured something was missing. And that smells strangely like a used litter box."

"Uncle Dennis, I think the cat is in here."

"Meaow . . ."

"Aahhh!"

We chucked the couch out of the truck. The piano bobbed into the front lawn. Moving pads showered from the vehicle as Dad and my stepmom got into the action. Dad hurled a set of shelves onto the driveway, and my stepmom burst into violent weeping as we unveiled the miracle.

An emaciated heap of fur limped toward her. Our mouths gaped, and our eyes bugged out. Life was real for Stophie.

The doc wigged out when he heard our cat sat in the truck through three blizzards, 1,200 miles, and 23 days without food or water. Stophie lost 11 pounds and was prescribed kitten food to nurse him back to normal.

Dad says that Stophie was human enough to want to be with us no matter what, so he must have jumped in the truck to make sure he wouldn't be left behind. My stepmom says God put him in the truck and kept him alive so we'd appreciate positive things like sugarplums and purrs.

I don't know about all that. All I know is, he was gone, and now he's found.

Thanks, God.

Bret Schlisner is an editor on Giraffe News magazine in Berrien Springs, Michigan.