Cooking For Keely

pre-cancerous Keely

This being my 3-day weekend off, I plan to spend quite a bit of time playing in the kitchen which is always fun. Since we have a cookie/dessert exchange coming up at work this week, I need to decide what I want to bring which means I'll be trying out a few new recipes to narrow down my choices. However, the more important kitchen task at hand- and the one that needed to be done today, BEFORE Cookie Palooza 2012 can begin- was to cook an entire chicken for my cancer-y cat, Keely.

Yes, I am THAT pet owner who will cater to my animals (mostly within reason) when they're sick and/or dying. I did it for both Sasha and Seamus, and I'll do it for my other boys when their times come.

So, not to be graphic, but Keely has squamous cell carcinoma in his mouth which makes eating very painful and difficult. That being said, with the help of 2 different pain medications keeping him comfortable for whatever time he has remaining, I've had to make some major changes to his diet to make sure he CAN eat. Because of the extensive damage caused by the cancer, Keely can't eat his regular dry food and has quite a bit of difficulty eating the numerous types of canned cat food I've tried giving him, as well as the softer baby food; he produces an, um, inordinate amount of drool (major understatement) that severely inhibits his ability to eat. However. I discovered quite by accident on Friendsgiving that he has NO trouble eating shredded chicken and turkey. (One of my guests spotted Keely in stealth-mode, stealing a piece of turkey off of the platter sitting on the counter while we were playing a game in the living room.) Why that is, who knows? But, after that happened, I took all of the remaining turkey and chicken, shredded it, and fed it to Keely for the rest of that week... and he ate it. ALL of it. So. Once that was gone, I roasted a whole chicken last week for him which, again, he ate all week long and finished this morning.

Now, I should really take this opportunity to mention my intense dislike of meat on bones. Yes, I am fully aware that meat cooked on the bone keeps it juicy and flavorful blah blah blah. What can I say? Meat on bones grosses me out *shudder* so I very rarely cook an entire chicken, preferring instead to buy/prepare boneless/skinless chicken breasts. Well, I made that sacrifice for Keely and then had to listen to my roommate laugh at me the entire time I cleaned the meat from the bones because, apparently, I had a major Yuck Face going on the entire time. After talking to one of my co-workers one night this week, she suggested using the slow-cooker the next time I had to make a chicken because it would just fall off the bone and I wouldn't have to do much work.

Brilliant! (Thanks, Klein!)

So that's what I did today. Giant has roaster chickens (7-9 lb) on sale this week so I bought two of them, putting one in the freezer for another week, and the other went straight into the slow-cooker with some carrots and celery (no onions) on LOW for about 8 hours. Once it was mostly cool enough to handle, it was the work of just minutes to shred the meat, discard the bones, and pour the fresh chicken stock into jars to refrigerate.

Now that my cancer-y cat has food for the next week, that means I can spend tomorrow playing and experimenting with cookie recipes... oh, the possibilities! I did the same thing last year and ended up making 4 different cookies, 3 of which came to work for the cookie exchange. Overachiever? Who me? Hell yes I am! ;)