Minecraft

 

        Nolan woke up his computer and opened Minecraft. He had an idea to add a water park next to his castle. He’d been thinking about it all day at school since his friend, Jack, had added one to his world.

        Nolan loved Minecraft and had spent countless hours in creative mode, building his castle and surrounding village. After playing for an hour, his mom called down the stairs, telling him he had to come and set the table for dinner. “Ok, Mom!” he called back. “Just a minute!” He made sure to save his game, and then he exited to the home screen. He was about to close the game when he noticed something strange.

        There were his two save files—one for creative mode and one for survival mode. But underneath that, there was a third file. “What? Who made this one?” Just as he was about to click on it, his cat, Onyx, jumped up onto his keyboard. “Aw, man! Move out of the way, Onyx!”

        “Nolan, I need you upstairs, now!” Mom called. She was starting to use her mom voice.

        Sighing, Nolan closed Minecraft and went upstairs.

        Onyx sat next to the keyboard and watched Nolan run up the stairs. Suddenly, he was joined by Slate, his brother. “Whew! Good thinking, Onyx!” Slate said as he licked his paw. “Another minute, and he would have found our game.”

        Onyx rolled his eyes and sighed. “He’s going to figure it out sometime. I just put off the inevitable.” He started washing his face. “We’re going to have to save our game somewhere else.”

        “How?” Slate tilted his head to the side.

        “We’ll figure it out later tonight, when we play.”

        Arching his back, Slate said, “Let’s play for a few minutes right now. The humans will be eating dinner for at least an hour.” He went to move the mouse. “Come on, you be on the keys, and I’ll be on the mouse.”

        Onyx stepped in front of Slate. “Not now, you idiot! We have to wait until after midnight.” He sat right next to Slate, nearly pushing him over.

        “All right, all right. But did you see what the kid added in his game? All that water?”

        Onyx shuddered. “I’ll build whatever you want, except for anything to do with water.” He shuddered again.

        “Hey, you know what we should make?” Slate’s tail moved back and forth in excitement.

        “What?”

        “An enormous scratching post attached to a couch!”

        “Another one? But we’ve already made five of them.” Onyx’s eyebrows raised in surprise.

        “Aw, come on. You can never have enough scratching posts.”

        “Okay, but this time—” Onyx’s ears stood straight up. Someone was coming down the stairs.

        Nolan came and grabbed his backpack. He had forgotten to put it away earlier. When he walked by the computer desk, he saw Onyx and Slate watching him. “Hey guys, get off the desk!” He shooed them off before going back upstairs, carrying his backpack. He chuckled as he went to finish getting ready for dinner. He thought about how funny it would be if the cats accidentally turned on the computer or something. If there happened to be a Word document open, the cats would ruin it by sitting on the keyboard. He laughed again. Cats were so dumb.