cat-and-mouse game

cat-and-mouse game

1. A situation characterized by two parties engaged in a constant back-and-forth routine in which the advantage alternates between them. It's been a real cat-and-mouse game between these two teams—we won't be sure of the victory until the very last moment!
2. A situation characterized by two parties engaged in a constant back-and-forth routine in which one party attempts to gain tactical advantage over or draw out of hiding the other, often only to be thwarted or eluded. Police have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with drug dealers in this area for years now.
See also: game
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • thriller-diller
  • the cut and thrust of (something)
  • a chapter of accidents
  • squeezebox
  • squeeze-box
  • amateur hour
  • a dog-eat-dog world
  • be a chapter of accidents
  • Truth, Justice, and the American Way
  • a war of words
References in periodicals archive
GUNNING FOR YOU Clan face cat-and-mouse game with Mafia
All this appears to be nothing more than a cat-and-mouse game. The cat is unable to secure a definitive victory over the mouse, which despite not being able to defeat the cat is able to avoid capture.
In blustery conditions both teams played a cat-and-mouse game until the 23rd minute when Matthew Rees found space in the visitors' penalty area following a corner and netted from close range.
Either way, the real pleasure of Lees film comes from the cat-and-mouse game between Russell and Denzel Washington's Detective Keith Frazier, an ambitious and savvy cop with plenty of smarts and cunning of his own.
From then on, the British lieutenant FitzGibbon and the Yankee captain Chapin carry on a cat-and-mouse game of deception and guerilla tactics to try to get the upper hand.
Algonquin Park: Early March, 2002, achieves an even greater sense of destabilization, playing a cat-and-mouse game with our cognitive abilities by pitting the eye against the mind.
Anti-Doping Agency, indicated that what appears to have been uncovered is "intentional doping of the worst kind." People who are one step ahead of the system have taken the cat-and-mouse game of circumventing the testing technology to another level.
"These two things are happening together which make-up the cat-and-mouse game - shoppers hold off in their knowledge that stores will bring down the prices and then the stores reduce costs and the customers come back."
OODA explains nearly any cat-and-mouse game of warfare: The winner is the one who can decide and act the fastest.
Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah get caught up in a cat-and-mouse game inside their new home with three burglars.
This regulatory cat-and-mouse game also has a precedent from a century ago.
First he asked for a number from the audience and then proceeded to stamp out that number in multiple combinations of it, playing a cat-and-mouse game with the tabla (drum) player who would follow Khan's beatings in dialogue with the dancer.
The five - Kym Marsh, Myleene Klass, Suzanne Shaw, Danny Foster and Noel Sullivan - have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with fans.
Eleven years later Harris continues to tweak gay sensibilities with Hannibal, the third chapter in the cat-and-mouse game between serial killer Dr.
The result is a cat-and-mouse game between cop and robber with enough chemistry and competition to blow the doors off a bank vault.