When a lifetime isn’t enough to be believed

I know a person...  in her older years. She has a smartphone. She knows how to use it, She tries to keep up with the modern world..even when it changes faster than her knees can carry her. She can type faster than me and while she is drop dead gorgeous in my eyes, you can tell she is not 18 anymore. 

She’s not stubborn. She’s not lost in the past.She’s just… older.

And this week, standing at her front door, she was asked to prove how old she was. Yes, by a delivery driver from the local adult beverage shop...... with a bottle of Irish whiskey I had ordered for her. What happened next was shocking. Welcome to E- Australia...

RATTY NEWS SPECIAL BULLETIN

By Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble, Editor-in-Cheese

It has been a busy week here in Dusty Gulch.

It all began with a report I filed a few days ago but held back from publishing due to rising duck-threat levels and escalating biscuit security.

But now, with the town in open uproar and the smell of conspiracy wafting stronger than Maude Elphinstone’s curried egg sandwiches, I can at last reveal the events that have shaken Dusty Gulch to its very poultry-plucked core:

 “Mayor Abduckted!”

Before he was a U.S. Senator, Vice President, or bestselling author, J.D. Vance was just a kid in a holler in Middletown, Ohio - raised by his grandmother, shaped by chaos, yet grounded by a stubborn Appalachian pride. In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote not just of poverty or politics, but of a cultural inheritance: the fierce loyalty, front porch wisdom, and the sounds that echoed through the hills and into his soul.

For many like him, Appalachian music wasn’t just background noise - it was the heartbeat of a people who had little, lost much, but clung fiercely to their identity. Carried across oceans from Ireland and Scotland, shaped by African, English, and frontier influences, this music tells a story that stretches from ancient highlands to the misty mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and beyond.

It is a story of survival. Of belonging. Of a people bruised but unbroken - still finding harmony amid hardship. 

From the rat-hunters of age-old sailing ships to the black-cloaked Catalinas prowling the Pacific skies, cats have served the military with a quiet, enduring presence. Agile, alert, and unflinching under fire, they’ve been more than mascots - they’ve been symbols of readiness and resolve.

My favourite of them all flew under the callsign PBY: the mighty Catalina, a slow but unstoppable flying boat that saved lives, hunted submarines, and watched vast oceans with tireless eyes.

Whether curled on a warship’s deck or gliding through enemy skies on midnight raids, cats - furry or winged - have always stood ready to fight or fly. The question is… are we?