To be in the position of advantage; be SITTING PRETTY: willing to give us a hundred seventy million in preferred notes. We're sitting in the catbird seat
[1930s+; fr a term used by a poker opponent of the late sportscaster Red Barber to explain his situation with two aces in the hole at stud poker; Mr Barber adopted the term, which was afterwards used by James Thurber in a story called ''The Catbird Seat'' with attribution to Red Barber; probably a Southern dialect term based on a folk notion of the cleverness and masterfulness of catbirds and/or their high and superior perch]