Yay for Kettle!
Mission : Impossible accomplished. To be fair, by the time Annie got here he was so stoned I think almost anyone could have got him in the crate. But she does seem to have "the touch" with him, and of course the carrying thing with my back being so bad.
He was a very good boy, lying there while the lovely Cathy listened to his heart & lungs, and prodded his tummy. She even managed to carry him over to get weighed, though he looked a bit of a dead weight in her arms. Couldn't find any signs of there being a blockage, and though his tummy was a bit tense it seemed more like the fact he is a stressy tense cat than there being a problem, and no signs of discomfort in particular.
So the next step is 3 days of poo samples, which luckily she said CAN be mixed with litter (his currently forms little clumps of wood pellet shavings held together with cow pat textured poo).
One plus point was that he was so stoned that I could give him gentle chin scritches all the time we were there, which he seemed to appreciate as well. I reckon I got more quality fondling time in today than in the last 6 month!
I started an insurance claim while I was there, which the vets will back date to his previous visit as that was for the same thing. I will have to pay the excess, but he will have already racked up more than that with the 2 visits so far, the probiotic paste he wouldn't touch, and of course testing the poo samples which I gather is a couple of hundred quid.
Thank you again to Annie, much appreciated.