If I am not mistaken, I believe it should be 'A', if you meant "the gold and brown puzzle pieces are on the cats head" not "the gold and brown puzzle pieces are the cat's head".
The first and the third sentences contain parallel structures. Parallel structure, or parallelism, is the repetition of the same grammatical structure or form within a sentence, so it becomes more balanced, and, therefore, more readable and clear to understand.
In the first sentence, the parallel structure has been used in the comparison: "... would make war <em>rather than let</em> the nation survive and accept war<em> rather than let</em> it perish..."
In the third sentence the same grammatical form has been used too: "<em>all dreaded it </em>(1) <em>all sought to</em> avert <em>it </em>(2)."
