THERE ARE, I suppose, worse jobs than taking Bear to the vet. Deep-pit mining in Siberia, perhaps, or sweeping up after depleted uranium shell explosions, or reviewing a Spice Girls album. Just don't ask me for any quick decision.

I do know that given the choice, I'd rather try to neuter a porcupine without benefit of anesthesia or get a morning-after pill down a crocodile's throat.

Bear is Teddy Bear, our elderly tabby cat, the most placid and pliable of felines - until it comes to anything medical. Then he becomes capable of turning metal bars into chewing gum and leaping tall veterinarians at a single bound.

At least so it seems when it comes time for his checkups. We have just moved into our country cottage and have had to make a lot of changes - including a new vet for our three cats, Currant Bun, Ali Magraw and, of course, Bear. My wife Elizabeth and I cringed at the mere thought.

Bear is a "rescue" cat who, at approximately age 18 years, came to us almost exactly a year ago. His medical phobia came home to me when, as I drove him to his first trip to our vet in London, he treated me to an awesome 15-minute display of projectile barfing, gullywashing pees and poos whose odor would knock the sinuses out of a rhinoceros.

And thus it has been ever since. Put a cat carrier in front of him, and all of Bear's bodily orifices seem to open at once. So it was with some trepidation that we bundled him into a well-papered carrier and set off from the cottage for his introductory visit to the new vet in the nearby village of Adderbury.

We weren't disappointed. At the end of the three-mile journey that took all of 10 minutes, Bear, carrier and all were a mess. It doesn't bear further description, except to say it took the vet's helper nearly most of the appointment time to get it cleaned up while Elizabeth and I held the cat down for the examination proper.

The lady vet tried to pry open Bear's mouth to examine his teeth. I prayed for her soul and hoped her will was in order. She stuck a thermometer up his derriere, and I wondered whether we should send flowers to the service, or just make a donation to her favorite charity.

He was still growling and struggling when the vet said his teeth needed regular cleaning and advised us to "take a little toothpaste and rub it along his gums and teeth, with a circular motion..."

Sure, lady, I'll do that little thing, just as soon as I plunge my hand into the fish tank and pet the piranha, dangle my naughty bits for the cobra's amusement and give the boa constrictor a friendly squeeze to cheer him up. I like to do the safe things first.

Bear has kidney trouble - that we've known from the start, since it's an ailment that most elderly male cats come down with - but the vet suggested she still needed a urine sample and could we please persuade the cat to produce one by tomorrow morning, say?

Elizabeth and I exchanged looks that questioned this lady's sanity. I know she was quoting from the vet's textbook, but this was Bear we were talking about. Try to squeeze pee out of him, and you are closing in on a trip to the prosthetic clinic at Queen Mary's Hospital for a hand replacement job.

Anyway, after about 30 minutes, the exam was over and Bear was hustled back into his carrier. He punctuated the whole ordeal by promptly dropping a world-class smelly dump onto the new newspapers the vet's poor aide had just lined the cage with so neatly.

Now we await the test results - not for the ailments because we know what those are, kidney troubles, a touch of thyroid agony, etc. Our trepidation centers on the treatment - specifically, the prospect of trying to shove any pills down Teddy Bear's throat.

Now vets are quite cavalier in their prescriptions of pills for cats. "Give Tiddles here a couple of these dime-sized jobbies every two hours or so for the next half of eternity and let me know how he gets on." I'm convinced that no vet offering this guidance has ever tried himself/herself to pill a cat.

Or consider the advice of numerous vets, to mix the contents of the capsule into the cat's normal food. Elizabeth and I have tried that, and our conclusion is that you can mix a pill into 3.8 tons of prime minced beef and 98.7 cats out of a hundred will find it within three minutes and spit it 10 feet across the average kitchen.

Ali Magraw, our long-hair tortoiseshell, has developed the knack of holding an unwanted pill in her mouth for 10 or 15 minutes or however long it takes you to go somewhere else before she deposits it as a slimy mess on your carpet/bed/easy chair/clean shirt/banana pudding.

But not even Bear can match Spyder, our much loved but, alas, late black cat, for pill repulsion ability. Spyder could clamp his mouth shut so tightly that you couldn't open it with a tire jack, and if you could pry it open you needed a SWAT team to hold him down long enough to pop the pill in - even if you dared try.

We mixed pills in milk, in mashed salmon, in honey, in minced beef, in cod filets, in cream, yogurt and cottage cheese, with zilch luck. This cat could sniff out medication even if it was diluted to one part in six zillion, or approximately your chances of winning the lottery jackpot.

This sort of warfare goes on in many, if not most, cat-owning - or cat-run - households. Bear and his mates by and large have the upper hand, and until someone develops a cat pill that tastes like prime steak, casualty wards around the world will continue to do a booming business.

Thought for the Week: When you do a good deed, get a receipt, in case heaven is like the IRS.

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