A relationship in which two parties closely monitor and challenge one another in a suspicious or self-protective manner, often because each party is attempting to gain an advantage over the other.
The Allied and the enemy submarine played a game of cat and mouse, checking up on each other's whereabouts and strategies.
The hackers played a cat and mouse game with the system administrators: the hackers kept trying new tricks, and the system administrators kept mounting electronic defenses.
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The Lizard however has first to contend with Akechi, Japan's number-one detective, who has been hired by the jeweler to protect his possessions. Akechi and the Lizard match wits and play cat-and-mouse while flinging weighty epigrams on crime, romance and beauty at each other.1992 February 2, S.H. Chua, “Cars, Guns and Go-Go Chicks”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 28, page 7:
In practice, however, it is extremely difficult to form a new union and the unions are engaged in a constant game of cat and mouse with the Registrar.2007, Marvin J. Levine, Worker Rights and Labor Standards in Asia’s Four New Tigers:
She loved their daily rides, the easy banter, the flirtatious game of cat and mouse they played.2014, Alison Weir, The Marriage Game:
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A form of attack in which the attacker toys with the victim by inflicting minor damage or letting the victim have futile hopes of escape before finally finishing the victim off.
He was thinking how wonderful this game of cat and mouse was. He loved the game and the feeling of control he had over this poor innocent girl.2009, Judith C. Issette, Messenger of Death, page 34:
The payback for that would come in the form of a prolonged game of cat and mouse, finally culminating in a deadly game that he had perfected years earlier.2009, Jarlon Magee, Travel in Fear:
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She told of narrow escapes and a harried game of cat and mouse, until eventually she'd reached the darkened jungle in which Torys had found her.2014, Mark Derbyshire, New Worlds, page 30:
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A children's game in which one player (the "cat") attempts to break through a ring of players to catch another player (the "mouse") in the centre.
Idiomatic suspenseful, 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:
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:
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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:
cat-and-mouse
verb
› To engage in a game of cat and mouse.
1
To 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:
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:
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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:
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To toy with (one's victim).
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:
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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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: