cat-and-mouse

Definitions

1. 1

   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.
   • 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.
2. 2

   Alternative form of cat and mouse.

3. 3

   To engage in a game of cat and mouse.

   • 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.
   • 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.
   • 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.

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