Moments of Foreshadowing 3

[ARYa_Nym]

That is so awesome :D

Using cat vs. mouse imagery to foreshadow an Arya vs. Varys conflict totally seems like something GRRM would do too. What a subtle bastard he is.

Yes. Even without that he has the little bird connection which is also a prey of the cat.

A new study in The Journal of Ornithology on the mortality of baby gray catbirds in the Washington suburbs found that cats were the No. 1 killer in the area, by a large margin.

Nearly 80 percent of the birds were killed by predators, and cats were responsible for 47 percent of those deaths, according to the researchers, from the Smithsonian Institution and Towson University in Maryland. Death rates were particularly high in neighborhoods with large cat populations.

...

“Cats are way up there in terms of threats to birds — they are a formidable force in driving out native species,” said Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, one of the authors of the study.

The American Bird Conservancy estimates that up to 500 million birds are killed each year by cats — about half by pets and half by feral felines.

ETA: Arya also said:

"The biggest toms would seldom win, she noticed; oft as not, the prize went to some smaller, quicker animal, thin and mean and hungry. Like me, she told herself."

I think she will catch a prize.

I should also add that Arya kind of stumbled upon Varys and Illyrio in the first place because of Balerion the cat.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

However, Arya also called herself a mouse when she was in Harrenhall, until she "flies away past moon and stars" like a bat.

She is cat and mouse at the same time.

Are she doomed to devour herself?

[ARYa_Nym]

Arya was only briefly a mouse in ACoK but cats have been part of her story line since AGoT.

[Ser Wun Wun]

Arya was only briefly a mouse in ACoK but cats have been part of her story line since AGoT.

A good way to spy on Varys would be to pose as one of his "mice", maybe steal one of their faces. So maybe that's the significance, if there is any, of her being a mouse before :dunno:

She says this in ACOK:

She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty.

Certainly sounds like one of Vary's little mice to me :)

ETA: Some more quotes:

She was very small and Harrenhal was very large, full of places where a mouse could hide.

And:

And as lords and ladies never notice the little grey mice under their feet, Arya heard all sorts of secrets just by keeping her ears open as she went about her duties.

She's been a little mouse spy before....

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Yes , but if she is a mouse which becomes a bat, which becomes a cat ( -just like in the begining)

And the dragons are compared with cats.

How would they be related? What is the conection?

[ARYa_Nym]

She was only a mouse in Harrenhal but that period is long since over.

Her story has come full circle now. She was a cat in the first book

“…she slid from shadow to shadow. She pretended she was chasing cats…except she was the cat now, and if they caught her, they would kill her.”

and by AFFC/ADWD she is one again.

“Little cats who howl too loud get drowned in the canals,” warned the fair-haired bravo. “Not if they have claws.” And suddenly there was a knife in the girl’s left hand, a blade as skinny as she was.

“You were a cat, they tell me. Prowling through the alleys smelling of fish, selling cockles and mussels for coin. A small life, well suited for a small creature such as you. Ask, and it can be restore to you. Push your barrow, cry your cockles, be content. Your heart is too soft to be one of us.”

So to relate it to the the scene that Ser Wun Wun mentioned she is the cat. The KM was the one who was walking softly as a mouse while she was hissing and moving like a cat.

Ser Wun Wun it's possible that she may use the mice/bird as a cover then when she goes in for the kill she assumes her real role of the cat.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Double post!sorry..

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Yes , but if she is a mouse which becomes a bat, which becomes a cat ( -just like in the begining...well, in the begining and in the middle she is a she-wolf, according to Sandor)

(This reminds me the Gotterdammerung: The wolf will devour the sun, and her brother will eat the moon?)

And the dragons are compared with cats.

How would they be related? What is the conection?

....

And as lords and ladies never notice the little grey mice under their feet, Arya

Yes ...( :, Arya "Horse-face", also Arya "Underfoot"...

[ARYa_Nym]

Arya has identified as a lot of animals. Squab, swan, weasel, mouse, snake, wolverine, etc. In ADWD she is only a wolf and a cat.

Going places without being seen is also said of cats in ADWD. Cats go everywhere. No one really sees them.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Exactly, a complete? circle of transformations....

[ARYa_Nym]

Wolf and cats are constant for her though unlike the others. The groundwork is laid down since the first book so the point was that in the game of cat and mouse she is cat while Varys and Illyrio are the mice. In the scene the KM is foreshadowing Varys.

[Ice Turtle]

They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them. Arya I AsoS

English has "cat-and-mouse game", but Arya was the one catching cats. She is the one who hunts the hunters. Interesting that she is "married" to Ramsay, the man who hunts women for sport.

[ARYa_Nym]

They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them. Arya I AsoS

English has "cat-and-mouse game", but Arya was the one catching cats. She is the one who hunts the hunters. Interesting that she is "married" to Ramsay, the man who hunts women for sport.

I posted recently on cats in the direwolf reread that cats are among the few predators known to hunt and kill for fun.

A deadly game of cat and mouse" is often a very real situation; cats not taught to hunt properly by their mothers often appear to clumsily toy with their prey before killing it, and even veteran mousers will play with their quarry before killing and consuming them, in order to avoid being bitten, since the saying is correct that "even a cornered mouse will snap at a cat" (but only when the mouse is aware of the cat; meanwhile, a cat that ambushes a mouse by surprise will kill it instantly, which is why cats are experts at hunting by stealth and secrecy). Cats are also among the few predators known to hunt and kill for fun, even when they're not going to eat the prey (though given that among the other animals known to do this are humans, we don't really have much room to give ourselves grief).

While I wouldn't say that she kills for fun like Ramsay she gets enjoyment/a thrill out of the hunt and the kill as time goes on.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Look into the weasel´s soup:----) Gotterdammerung

[Ice Turtle]

I posted recently on cats in the direwolf reread that cats are among the few predators known to hunt and kill for fun.

While I wouldn't say that she kills for fun like Ramsay she gets enjoyment/a thrill out of the hunt and the kill as time goes on.

Most fighters get thrill of fighting and killing or they wouldn't be good at it.

[lojzelote]

OK, I'm probably going to embarass myself because it was almost surely already pointed out million times before, but I noticed in AGoT when Cat "haggles" with Old Walder Frey:

Catelyn would gladly have spitted the querulous old man and roasted him over a fire, but she had only till evenfall to open the bridge.

I pray it will come true.

[ARYa_Nym]

Most fighters get thrill of fighting and killing or they wouldn't be good at it.

According to Sandor they do but I think just as many don't get any enjoyment out of it but do what they feel is necessary.

Anyways, I posted a quote above where she segued into catching cats to actually being the cat. Catching cats is actually what starts her cat theme and also brings her to be in the vicinity of Varys and Illyrio. I believe it was mentioned earlier about the dragons being compared to the cats over Illyrio's walls as well.

Ser Wun Wun I think has caught on to the link/theme that has been subtlety written.

[sertravisredbeard]

All this talk about cats has me wondering why no houses have cats as their sigils. I might be forgetting if there are but none come to mind. There's all kinds of stupid ones, like chickens and vultures stealing babies. But no cats besides lions?

[Ice Turtle]

All this talk about cats has me wondering why no houses have cats as their sigils. I might be forgetting if there are but none come to mind. There's all kinds of stupid ones, like chickens and vultures stealing babies. But no cats besides lions?

Yeah that is really weird there is even a squirrel one, or a kettle, but no cats.

[FittleLinger]

OK, I'm probably going to embarass myself because it was almost surely already pointed out million times before, but I noticed in AGoT when Cat "haggles" with Old Walder Frey:

Catelyn would gladly have spitted the querulous old man and roasted him over a fire, but she had only till evenfall to open the bridge.

I pray it will come true.

Ha, that's funny and interesting because I had made that connection before but not based on that quote (I never caught it). My thing was that in norse Ragnarok, Freyr, god of fertility, is killed by a Fire Giant. So my prediction stands and gets strengthened by yours - I think when the shit goes down, the Freys (not Walder per se, I think he will die before that of natural causes) will get mighty roasted either by dragons or another fire source.

Another thing on the Arya cat-mouse, well Arya's mother is... Cat :D