Timed Feeders and TR: Thoughts

I have (had, actually) two timed feeders. One, which I still use, is the single meal rectangular one--CatMate, I think. We have mounted it on a heavy board covered in a piece of plastic tablecloth because when we used it for dear Basil, he discovered you just flipped it over and, voila! dinner on demand.

That worked for a while until he learned to slip his claw into the right spot and open it. (Discovering that took monitoring him with a laptop.)

I also had but resold the PetSafe five meal but that lasted one night. He stick a claw in it and rotated the dish to get the food and once again--delivery time!

Rosie has not figured out how to open the single one. But I can't make it close once it is open, so I have a %^$# alarm set for %&*# 4:45am every day to makes sure I pick it up and leave her no food for 2.5 hours pre-shot. I'd like to get a feeder that would close up after a certain time. The PetSafe (as Andy pointed out somewhere else) did that if you programmed a meal for a time but left the compartment empty. But it is SO big and clumsy and I do not like feeding from plastic. (The one I have now accommodates the small Stainless steel bowls we use instead to its own plastic, only because we mounted it on a board.)

Sp, does anyone have any other recommendations? Man, I'd like to stop getting up at 4:45 every morning. And of course 99.9% of the time, the food is gone.

 

I have a Petsafe5 and yes it is big but I love it. I used it for a 4:30 a.m. snack for Gracie and now use it for Tobey. I also will not let them eat off plastic so I went to one of the gourmet olive oil stores and they had small porcelain plate/saucers to put oil in for dipping. They fit perfectly in the Petsafe5 trays and do not impede it from rotating. Here's a photo which shows one....as well as my sweet precious baby girl

 

@Marje and Gracie is there a way of putting ice beneath the trays? And is the timer digital or a dial? I have an auto feeder that is two compartments and yes unfortunately the trays are plastic and luckily Boomer doesn't get chin acne from them. But I chose it because I can put a flexible ice pack in the bottom to help keep the food fresh. It does have a dial so it's impossible to have it open at an exact time.

 

Those are awesome, much easier to wash individual bowls than the whole tray. Though Pimp seems to really like the steep sides of the compartments.

@Lydia & Rosie AKA &Basil I think you can program the microchip feeders for times...but I think they might be plastic bowls. Might be worth looking into?

ETA sounds like I think too much

 

Marje--Oh, my gosh, she's so cute! And looks like she's on the verge of marrying the thing or founding a new religion. Great idea about the dipping bowls.

Judy, yours sound like mine, which comes in a two compartment model. Rectangular? I don't use ice. Might as well fess up right now. If I have to, I sue frozen food hunks.

Andy, what is a microchip feeder? Is that a brand or like literally your cat wears something and it mates to the dish? (Do you know the Paul Simon song, Think Too Much? Now it is earworming me! LOL!

 

Sureflap Microchip Pet Feeder

FDMB search results

ETA: I hope I'm not sending you on a wild goose chase, if you can't program times I apologize. With the technology that's in them, I don't see a reason why that wouldn't be an option. I haven't looked too far into them because I know I can't afford them.

 

Thanks!

 

@Melanie and Smokey You use the SureFlap feeders, right? Can you program "lockout" times?

 

It's digital and I've never had any issues with it going off on time. You can set up to 9 different programs altho I'm not sure why since there aren't that many feeding compartments. I don't see how you could put ice beneath the trays in this one but a lot of people make catsicles out of the food. They put the canned or raw food in ice trays, freeze, and then pop out what they need and put them in the feeder so they thaw in the feeder. I haven't done that or had the need to do it. I also think if you are just leaving out canned food, as long as it's not really hot in the house, it would be OK to do it without ice for several hours. I, personally, wouldn't put thawed raw food out for several hours.

 

Thank you. She was in love with her "candy" machine as we called it. She knew exactly when it was going to go off and would get out of bed 15 minutes early and wait patiently....staring at it and willing it to open.

This photo was the first morning I set it up on a timed cycle for her. I woke up to see her like that and since I slept with my phone for the alarm, I could snap the photo. I taught her how to use the feeder just the evening before. The first time it whirred, it scared her but by the third time, she was waiting for the treats, and then she was trying to figure out how to get the next tray around. She was such a smart, smart baby girl.

I love the microchip ones but $$$$$$. For us, just doling out a light snack, it wasn't worth the cost but if I had multiple mouths to feed, one of which was FD, and I couldn't be home all the time to monitor feedings, it would have easily been worth the cost.

 

I've never looked at doing it so I can't say for sure, but since there is no clock setting on it, I am not sure how it could be done. It is more for limiting which cat in the household can get into it than for specifying times a cat can get into it I think. They do make doorflaps that can have time lockouts. I've seen people make hutches or large plastic tubs into feeding rooms for their cats with the doors or put them on a small room or closet so the authorized cat can go into that room to eat.

There is a small flat spot where a small ice pack or some of those little refreezable ice cubes could go. I've never used ice through 6 years and feeding 7 different cats with them and haven't killed anyone yet.

 

Ug, sorry Lydia. I assumed they had wi-fi or something for programming.

 

I buy the smallest Cryopak's gel packs from my local camping supply store (@Judy and Boomer - Canadian Tire), fold them to fit in the rectangle under the tray and slip an elastic over to keep it in that shape. I have two, one being frozen and one in use. I feed raw so I need to keep things cool.

@Tricia & Cinco & Harvey - posted that the replacement ice packs are now in stock at Amazon again.

 

Good to know. I never even thought about putting them under the tray.

 

I've always put an ice pack under the feeder tray, because I found when I didn't, the later meals didn't get eaten. I know how nasty cat food smells if it's been left out on the counter all day, so I wouldn't blame them for not eating it. Here's where to order one.


I also add more water to the later meals, to keep them from drying out. I had the CatMate C50 (three of them, actually) for years, which has a dial and two places for the ice packs, but you can't set them less than 4 hours before the first feeding time, and I found that after 10 years or so they became unreliable (they just don't make stuff like they used to ). My GA, Max, also managed to get the top of his a few times. We now have two of the PetSafe 5 compartment feeders and I love them. None of my cats have ever gotten chin acne from eating out of them - Sasha had it, but she never ate out of a timed feeder! Using the actual tray works best for Harvey, anyway, as he pushes his food forward as he eats it, and if I used Marje's method, half the food would end up over the edges of the little bowl and I don't think he could get to it.

LOVE the photo of your adorable LBG, @Marje and Gracie !

One I do NOT recommend is the Q-Pets Six Compartment feeder. The top is very flimsy and it's a pain to program. You can't suspend the times if you're not going to use if for a day or two, so you have to turn it off, and then you have to reprogram the time and everything all over again. It has an option to record your voice, but it's so quiet the cat can't hear it unless he's standing right next to it.

 

I will have to look in the sporting good store for them. I use the two compartment feeder. I have a small soft pack that doesn't fit. I use the small reusable ice cubes under the trays and put one regular ice cube in the food itself. The feeder has 2 hr intervals. So it's hard to get it exactly. But it's close enough.

 

I forgot to look for those, do you have a picture of them by chance? I think there might have been images with your post at some point, but I can't see them

 

I did not like that idea either. So, I went to my local kitchen shop, or you could try K-mart or Targets and got small white ceramic ramekins to go inside the slots.

 

You can’t see the image in post #2 of this condo? I’ll take some photos and post them.

 

Is this dinner time vigil?? Too cute!!

 

Here's a pic of what I purchased. I made a template of the compartment size with wax paper and took to the store.

 

The 5 compartment feeder is the one we use as well. It was a lifesaver particularly since BK was high dose and lives is in a cottage separate from the main house.
Once shortly after we started using the feeder I arrived to give him his shot and saw that he was grazing on his +8 meal and realized that could interfere with PS BG so I programmed the last spin of the carousel for +10 with no food to ensure no eating after that. However BK would run expecting food so I started placing a chunk of kitty crack (freeze dried chicken breast) in that compartment so as not to be cruel.
He would perch himself on the counter about 15 min before meal time and wait for the feeder to spin...



Shortly after we got the timed feeder I got a new paper shredder which made the same sound as the feeder. He would come running whenever I'd shred anything. He eventually figured out the difference.

 

Funny, Pavlov's cats!

 

No...early morning snack.

I saw some like those ramekins at Bed, Bath, Beyond but they were made in China and it looked like it would be really hard for my little flat faced Scottish Folds to get the food out.

Here's the photos of the dipping saucers I bought @MollynSkooter. Sorry about the measure on the bottom photo. I only have engineer's scale (ruler) here so they are probably about 0.9" high.

 

Oh, I like those better! More room for those meaty little faces. Where did you get yours?

 

At a local gourmet olive oil store.

 

Thanks, everyone, for all the replies. I will be looking into all this when I can.

 

Maybe it's a west coast thing, but I got some sushi dipping bowls. Plenty of those in stores around here.

 

I use little ceramic dishes that I got as seconds when Syracuse China closed its operation. Purrfect size for the CatMate C-20, which is a 2-compartment feeder with mechanical timers (no fooling around with digital stuff). This feeder comes with its own cold pack, which fits in a compartment underneath the trays. Rusty eats all of his meals from this feeder (we don't set the timers when we're home). When we're out, we simply set the timers. We call it his "Automat".

Ella & Rusty

 

We had the PetSafe 5 compartment feeder and really loved it. Punkin had acro, which means a voracious appetite and he couldn't get into it. The only time I ever had it fail (not rotate properly) was when we hadn't fully seated the feeding tray into the base unit. We learned to always seat the food tray and use the button to manually rotate the food tray forward one slot.

Molly & Skooter has 2 of them - if I'd thought of that when I was working I'd have gotten a second feeder, too.

I have nothing but good things to say about the feeder. It gave me a huge measure of peace knowing that punkin could get to food if he needed it. We put an ice cube in each slot that had food, but there is a small place, as others have said, for a blue ice if you can find one that fits.