I learned something once that has helped me through many aspects of life.
Never help a cat catch a mouse.
Once I saw a mouse run from the kitchen to the living room where it darted behind my computer desk. Our cat, the late PeeWee P. Forepaws, saw the mouse and decided to hold a vigil. After an hour of the cat sitting and staring at the desk I decided she needed some help.
I took a broom handle and poked it down behind the desk which distracted the cat. The mouse made a run for it and got away.
Never make yourself more interesting to the cat than the cat’s quarry.
Bizarre behaviour by the resident human would qualify as “more interesting” as far as the cat is concerned. Not only is the cat fascinated by what you are doing, but the cat then starts to ponder if it was something s/he did to get you to behave that way, and then, can s/he get you to repeat this bizarre behaviour on command, maybe when you have company.
After the cat we had when I was growing up died, my folks had a mouse problem. Through my father’s business, they came into a cat named Marshmallow. Marsh was built like a pear. To the extent that he would be sitting up, with his forelegs straight and his forepaws on the ground, and the weight toward his butt would win, and he’d slowly rock back till he was sitting like a bowling pin. He was kind of like a Weeble.
My mother opened the bread drawer one day and found a mouse. So I did what any teenage boy would do, and took all the bread out and put Marshmallow in the bread drawer with the mouse. He kind of looked at the mouse, began to drift upward, and looked generally bored. I finally took him in my arms and held him like a machine gun pointed at the mouse, yelling Kill kill, and he got the message. He never did play with it, but did eventually exit the bread box with the mouse in his mouth.
It beats the hell out of waking up at 3 AM with a cat batting a partially disemboweled mouse around the bedroom, which has happened to us a couple of times recently.