The title of Why Cats Hates Birds very much reflects the collection's themes. Are we trapped by our nature? And what is our understanding of nature? What is black and white, straight and gay, reality and fantasy, Canadian and Barbadian? The stories in Why Cats Hate Birds are Armstrong's way of saying that such distinctions are not natural but of our own construction. The work spans the length of Armstrong's writing career. The earliest, 'Flying in God's Face,' which inspired his novel Of Water and Rock, is set in the 1960's, though the majority take place in a today familiar to us all. Three stories in particular are linked by the character Charles Blackette: 'Kingdom of Fools,' 'Invention' and 'Blood is Thick.' They explore Blackette's life as a black man who battles his notion of self. But, at heart, all the stories in Why Cats Hate Birds, perceptive, resonant, emotionally honest, are an attempt to break those silos that separate us, and make us realize that other people's stories are our stories.

Thomas Armstrong visited Barbados for the first time in 1979 and fell in love with more than the island. He married a Barbadian. From the very first the island and its people impressed upon him a sense of time and place that was both wondrous and sad. A short story, Flying in God’s Face, since published in POUI, the literary journal of Cave Hill, University of the West Indies, was originally written for a reunion of his wife’s family in 2005. Dedicated to his mother-in-law, the matriarchical head of his Barbadian family, this story was the seed from which this novel grew. In 2009, the novel was entered in the Frank Collymore Literary Awards, where it won second prize. Thomas Armstrong is educated in Mathematics and Science, currently makes a living as a software developer, and divides his time between Canada and Barbados. He is married and has two children.

Thomas Armstrong's profile page