cat-and-mouse

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.

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.

Alternative form of cat and mouse.

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.

To engage in a game of cat and mouse.

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.

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