Hello there, thanks for playing!
By default, the laser pointer takes 2.5 seconds to fully capture Oscar's attention if you only hold down the mouse and don't move (as indicated by a slowly enclosing red circle). Once it does, Oscar jumps towards it.
Behind the scenes, time is taken away from that timer proportional to the difference of the mouse position between frames. As an experiment, try holding down left click, and swiping across the screen. Though you won't have much control over where Oscar jumps toward, he should do so almost immediately. Wiggling the mouse should give the benefit of control and charge efficiency. If not, that's a bug, and I'd like nothing more than to squash it! :D