Foraging theory suggests that animals should adjust their behaviour accordingly to optimise foraging efficiency and overall fitness, trading off harvest rate with costs to fitness it are increased the risk perseption to harassment and injury from larger carnivores. For this behaviour, the mesopredators use the its most developed sense for minimize te risk (eg. The foraging behaviour of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) experiment where olfactory risk cues were manipulated. The red foxes increased giving-up density of food by 34% and quitting harvest rates by 29% in response to wolf urine. Thus, red foxes utilized olfaction to assess risk and experienced foraging costs due to the presence of a cue from gray wolves (Haswell et al., 2018).
I'm not sure about apex predator avoidance specifically, but I think both vision and hearing are more important senses than olfaction in felids. Perhaps this book chapter by Kitchener et al (2010) is helpful?
Chapter Felid form and function
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