A parasite might fair better in one genotype than another. So it kinda needs that genotype/lineage to survive, even if it needs the specific host to die..
My point is even without sentience, the relationship is more akin to farmer and cattle, than hunter and prey.
OK, but my reply was mostly to your "Why boldness?". The immune system of a mouse, while certainly not impenetrable, can be difficult to attack, and boldness might just have been the
part that happened to be most easy to attack. While I don't necessarily accept your suggestion that your other "strategies" would be better, they may have been harder to implement.
Also I'd like to point out that I spent a lot of time in my youth studying a mouse called Mickey, and it was often seen with a magnifying glass, negating visual impairment.
A very reasonable hypothesis! But I'd like to advice caution before a proper Scientific analysis has been performed to see whether said boldness is the actual cause and so on.
A double blind experiment might shed some light on this: Both the cat and the mouse is given a blindfold. To make it simpler a man named Occam might lend the cat a razor as weapon
Now I think about it, I also studied this mouse called Jerry, and I do not remember many other dangers it was subject to, beyond a fat woman standing on a chair screaming.