I grew up in a house with a persian cat, toy poodle, and aqua parakeet. The cat chased the dog and bossed her around (Cat wieghed 20, dog 6 lbs) The bird divebombed the dog and cat, rode them around the house, and allowed the cat to stalk it until it got close enough and then the parakeet would grab the cats wiskers and yank, sending the cat running for cover.
Parakeets are cheap to buy. Parakeets are bold, small (and consequentially have small poop), smell relatively pleasant, and aren't extremely noisy or harsh sounding. They don't have a squawk, they whistle. If you get one in the spring time when they are babies that is the best time. Parakeets have black stripes across the top of their head. As they age the stripes recede -
receding hairline. The youngest ones will have stripes all the way up next to their cere (sp?). Their cere will be pinkish, pale plue when they are chicks, as they grow older it will get darker in color. Females will remain pinkish and males will turn blue or blue grey. Parakeets can live about 7 years. That's about the average that each of our's lived to. One died from pesticide poisoning. They are sensitive to things like that. My mother gave him celery leaves. He got a major stomach ache and died 2 or 3 days later. The vet helped as much as possible but there wasn't much that could be done. He said it was because there had been pesticide on the celery leaves. So if you give them any treats like that make sure you wash things well. Food for the smaller birds is inexpensive and easy to find. If you change the paper in their cage daily there will be little mess. Our managed to always spill a little gravel and seed husks on the floor under his cage but that was easy vacuumed up.
My parakeet that I got when I was a teenager became a great pet. I got him as a young bird and trained him. He came when I called him, he allowed me to hold him upsidedown with his back lying on my hand and he loved when I scratched the back of his head. He learned a few phrases including "Pretty Bird" "Here Cappy" (his name was cappyboppy/cappy for short) and best of all "Here Kitty Kitty". He learned to open his cage door and would perch above my mom's curtains. Most of the time he was allowed to fly around the house. Once in a while parakeets will chew on paper. My Dad actually had to tell his college professor that the "bird Ate it" once but he took the shreaded report in to show the prof. We would usually put the birds in the cage when we left the house - also to protect them from the cat just in case - so they didn't have much opportunity to tear up papers. I would love to get another bird. We have a cat now and I'm just not up to caring for another creature in the small apt we have. Good luck on your hunt.
edit: I think I need to clarify - the kind of parakeet I'm referring to is the brightly colored, green, blue or aqua budgie. We also never trimmed their wings though some people do. We just trained ours very carefully soon after we got them to sit on our fingers and most of them would come willingly when we called.