cat list in 2 or 3 colums

You don’t need a template for this. You can write something like this when editing your page/post (in the “Text” text-editor):

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>
    [catlist id=3 numberposts=5 excludeposts=this]
    </td>
    <td>
    [catlist id=3 numberposts=5 excludeposts=this offset=5]
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

The offset should equal the number of posts (numberposts) times the number of columns – 1. So if you had a third column, the code would look like this:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>
    [catlist id=3 numberposts=5 excludeposts=this]
    </td>
    <td>
    [catlist id=3 numberposts=5 excludeposts=this offset=5]
    </td>
    <td>
    [catlist id=3 numberposts=5 excludeposts=this offset=10]
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>