This is the amusing moment the real-life Tom and Jerry were seen playing the ultimate game of cat and mouse in the backyard of a building.

Smartphone footage shows the pair trying to outsmart each other, similar to Hanna-Barbera's popular animated duo, in the city of Nanning, in Guangxi region, China, near the border with Vietnam.

At the beginning of the video, the cat carried the rodent in its mouth before it suddenly dropped it on the ground.

But when the feline laid down a moment later, the rat rushed back to its hole in an attempt to escape, before the cat stormed in the same direction and intercepted it.

It then gently gripped the rat with its teeth, and carried it back to where it first left it. But the little grey rat made a second bid to escape the same way.

When the cat caught it once again, and brought it to another part of the yard, the rat tried to climb up a plastic broom and hide on December 25.