cat-and-mouse

1. idiomaticnot comparablesuspenseful, involving alternating roles of attack and defence.

   From a cat-and-mouse sequence at a busy airport to a long car chase through Rome to a grand finale aboard a runaway train, each action scene tops the one before it.

   2023 July 5, Murtada Elfadl, “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One review: Tom Cruise runs, jumps, and delivers again”, in AV Club

   2 more examples

   Does that produce a different dynamic when they meet in battle? ‘It does,’ said Hoy. ‘I tell myself that it doesn’t matter who you race against, you try to expose their weaknesses. The only difference is that they know your weaknesses. It just makes it a bit more of a mind game, a cat-and-mouse strategy.

   2012 February 15, Jonathan McEvoy, “Hoy and Kenny keep it friendly but barnstorming Olympic battle looms at the Velodrome”, in Daily Mail

   A cat-and-mouse thriller with delusions of grandeur, The Statement arrives wrapped in an intimidating mystique of high-minded solemnity that makes its vagueness and incoherence all the more disappointing when the pieces don't add up.

   2003 December 12, Stephen Holden, “The Statement (2003) FILM REVIEW; A Frenchman on the Run From His Vichy Past”, in New York Times

1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of cat and mouse.

present singular third person cat-and-mouses · participle present cat-and-mousing · participle past cat-and-moused · past cat-and-moused

1. To engage in a game of cat and mouse.
   1. intransitiveTo mutually monitor and challenge each other in an attempt to gain advantage.

      The Cinque Ports' navy had torn up and down the Channel harassing any marauding French; smugglers had cat-and-moused with revenue men over the marshes, into the woods.

      1975, Elizabeth Bowen, Pictures and conversations, page 26

      3 more examples

      You have actually "gone to contract" after months of cat-and-mousing with an editor who had to be convinced and who had to convince an editorial group of your punishability.

      2000, Arthur Plotnik, Elements of Authorship

      Light-headed we cat-and-moused, throttled down and sped up, weaving figure eights until ten miles from Biarritz, when we learned that even a Lightning Rocket is mortal.

      2014, Robert Wintner, 1969 and Then Some

      From the very start of caput 48, Caesar and Ariovistus no longer seem to communicate by means of speech but by means of military actions and reactions and the narrative of their cat-and-mousing does not contain many speeches.

      2017, Suzanne M. Adema, Speech and Thought in Latin War Narratives: Words of Warriors

   2. transitiveTo toy with (one's victim).

      Victor listened and smiled, teased and cat-and-moused me, but finally agreed to grounding my folly-in-the-air.

      1979, Diana Cooper, Autobiography, page 560

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      But previously it has only cat-and-moused him, trying to achieve the delicate balance of injuring him and yet not having to eat him alive, he then being too big in popularity to swallow.

      1955, The New Yorker - Volume 30, Part 5, page 197

      This is the reason too for the cat-and-mousing of Wilmarth: the Plutonians must spend hours making hintful revelations to him after they have him in their power, simply because this will maximize his scare. Lovecraft must cat-and-mouse with us as well, interminably exploiting the hesitations and reluctances of his narrator to tell us what the basic horror is.

      2004, Fritz Leiber, Ben J. S. Szumskyj, S. T. Joshi, Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark, page 301