cat-and-mouse

cat-and-mouse adjective: suspenseful, involving alternating roles of attack and defence. Also the alternative form of cat and mouse.

Adjective

cat-and-mouse (not comparable)

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

cat-and-mouse (third-person singular simple present cat-and-mouses, present participle cat-and-mousing, simple past and past participle cat-and-moused)

(intransitive) 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
(transitive) 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

cat-and-mouse is also the alternative form of cat and mouse.

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:
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:

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

What does cat-and-mouse mean?: Cat-and-mouse means suspenseful, involving alternating roles of attack and defence.
How do you use cat-and-mouse in a sentence?: 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.
What part of speech is cat-and-mouse?: Cat-and-mouse can be an adjective or a verb.

Adapted from Wiktionary: cat-and-mouse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cat-and-mouse.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cat-and-mouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cat-and-mouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.