Don’t you hate it when you see flies on and around the newly fresh food you’ve left out for your dog or cat? Do you find that you are woken up every night in the small hours when kitty is hungry and can’t wait for the alarm clock to go off? So, like a zombie, you have to get up and mooch around in the dark – too much light will wake you up – to open a bag of wet food or open a can, before staggering back to bed with no hope of any more sleep. Well, that’s us or at least it was as things have improved since we got a couple of automatic pet feeders. Our cat is an old lady now so there’s no chance of changing her habits. Sometimes she just wants company while she eats too.

So I started looking into automatic pet feeders. I had certain criteria for the new food bowl. My questions were:

• Does it keep the flies off and keep the wet food fresh?
• Does it attract my cat? Is it easy for her to open?
• Does it have a timer?
• Price? (This, well, I was prepared to pay anything because I was desperate by this stage and, she is worth it 🙂 )
• Battery type and how many (I’d never trust rechargeable batteries in something so important)

RELATED READING: The Nutritional Differences Between Dogs and Cats

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Petcute Automatic Pet Feeder

First of all, we bought the Automatic Pet Feeder by Petcute. I was attracted to this one because I thought it would be good not only for every day but also if we needed to go away for a night or two, in case of an emergency or something. Also, I can record a message to attract her to come and eat if we are not there and she’s feeling anxious about being alone. It is quite large (32.4x9cm), bigger than I expected but then I guess it does have to house the 6 different food trays and the auto-mechanism inside. It takes 4xC-size batteries. Imagine an orange cut it half; the segments would be like the food trays. Each one has a maximum portion size of 330ml and you can set the bowl to open each segment at different feeding times.

You fill up all 6 compartments with food. Say your dog is fed once a day, then each segment will open at the specified time you previously set via the LED display. We experimented – our cat eats 2 or 3 times per day and grazes – and found that if she ate 3 times, then the food lasted for 2 days (there are 6 trays).

Advantages

• Once you put down the food, you can leave it until all trays are empty
• If your pet only eats once a day – it would have to be a smallish pet because the trays don’t hold enough for a big dog – then you could leave the bowl for 6 days before having to refill it
• You can record a message (8 seconds in length) and the animal will recognize your voice when you call him/her to eat. Or you add music if that’s more to your pet’s liking…
• Secure and durable construction – your pet can’t reach the food until the lid slides open.
• Various colours are available.

Disadvantages

• In our experience, it worked well with dry food. Filling each tray with wet food turned out to be a waste of money because by the time the 4th, 5th, 6th tray came around, the food had dried out and/or she just didn’t fancy it, so we threw it all away. In fact, in the product description, it does actually say that this bowl “is not designed for wet food”, but we didn’t read that until afterwards. Silly us.
• Wet food in the first 3 trays worked well as the 3rd one still remained fresh and attractive to her. However, any food that was still ok to eat left behind in the previous bowl was automatically covered over when the next tray came around and, therefore, remaining food was wasted. This would be the same with dry food too.
• Very large. We have a small flat and floor space is precious. I suppose we could put it under the table instead…

Conclusion

So this bowl is great for dry food and for small to large dogs and cats, rabbits… as long as the food quantity is sufficient for a whole day’s nutrition and the animal can actually reach the food, then I would use this bowl again. But for our cat, with the fussiness she has for certain foods which can change from day to day, then this is not the solution I was looking for on a daily basis. In an emergency though then yes; if there was nobody to come in and care for her, we would definitely use this bowl. And as an added bonus, when you buy this bowl, Petcute donates a portion of the profits to animal charities and rescue shelters. Have a look at Amazon to know more.

Automatic Pet Feeders – Petcute

In my next post, I will look at the SureFeed Sealed Pet Bowl so please check back to read that review too.

I hope you found this review helpful. Do you use one of these bowls or can you recommend an alternative? Thanks for sharing any comments you may have below and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

* Prices shown exclude delivery charges and prices are correct as at publish date. The reviews above are my own and by no way constitute any responsibility if you decide to buy.