6 Meal Automatic Electronic Dog and Cat Pet Feeder with LCD Screen and Meal Time Message Recorder

I, and my cat, are very happy with this device. I definitely recommend reading the reviews here, and the directions, carefully, because it is tricky to figure out the settings the first time you set it up. But, once you get that figured out, it's pretty straightforward to set, very easy to fill/clean, and works like a charm once it's set to go. Even my cat sitters had no problem with it, after I showed them once. Also, I've had it for months, and there's no sign of it needing new batteries yet, which I'm happy about - was worried it would eat batteries, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. The only caveat I want to mention is that I think it's best for pets that aren't too strong/energetic. My cat is older, and not particularly curious/determined about getting into it, so the lid works great for him. But if he was the kind of cat who was determined to get into things, I can easily see the lid being more of a minor obstacle than a true method of securing the food. The little sliding door isn't that strong, is what I'm getting at. My cat just stares plaintively at the "food roomba" (as my friends call it), but if he was inclined to put any serious or strenuous effort into getting into it.... Overall, though, I'm extremely pleased with this purchase, and would definitely buy it again.

I've had it about two years, used it for occasional weekends, recently started using it for daily breakfast. Good: cats seem to be able to eat from it just fine. It spins when it says it does. It's easy to reuse the same program if you don't turn it off. Batteries last a long time. Our cats generally eat wet food. With a little planning, one can give them wet food for the first feeding: the day before, put wet food into wax paper in the bin, and carefully lift it out so as not to change shape much, then freeze it. Day of departure (or 12-18 hours before), put frozen food into the appropriate bin. So-so: Programming is kinda awkward, but I don't know that there's a better product out there. It would make this product better to either default to 24 hour mode or to make the am/pm indicator much larger. It's just a touch too easy to mean to set the feeding to 7am, but get 7pm instead. The clocks aren't super accurate, and we have two feeders, so eventually one opens first a few seconds before the other, eventually like 20 seconds before (after a week or two, not months or years). So rather than go to the feeder they're supposed to go to, when left unsupervised the cats just both go for and fight over whichever one of them opened first, and only really settle down (not always to their own bowl either!) after they've both opened. Bad: The cats figured out how to open the small part of the cover, and how to get at dry food in the adjacent bowl, so we effectively get only 4 feedings out of it, not 6. One of them recently decided to skip bin 4, so on the fourth morning, it just skips directly to the 5th bowl. The cats get a little bit as #4 passes, but as noted above, we were leaving #5 empty. Note that #5 and #6 were accessible because the cats figured out how to open the floppy part of the cover, so now we're down to 3 feedings instead of 6. So we're getting ready to buy new feeders, and I don't think I'm going to go for one of these. I do worry that there aren't better feeders that you can use with wet or dry food, and that are cat-proof, easy to program, and reliable.

Overall, I think this product is a good and reliable automatic foot dispenser, and I especially like that I get to decide how much food will be presented to my cat when I want it. Programming was a bit complicated but once I got the hang of it no problem at all. My only issue with the feeder is that after pressing "start now" or "start tomorrow" the bowl rotates and then stops on compartment number 6, and rotates to number 1 at the right time. Compartment number 6, in the mean time, is covered then by this flimsy cover, that took my cat about 2 days to realise he can just paw right out -- and then to top it off, without that flimsy cover, compartment number 5 is partially uncovered. So mister cat just scooped it all out and ate that too! So basically only 4 compartments are fully covered at any given time without that extra cover. Which in my case, is two days worth of food as opposed to three -- perhaps Crestuff could look into providing a more robust, better fitted and non-removable cover for that last compartment? Otherwise great product, am happy to rely on it for regular, timed feedings.

I bought this for my Fat Cat who wants to eat constantly and raids the other kitty's bowl in between meals. Now I can feed Fatty 6 equal portions around the clock. I also bought the Wonderbowl so my other kitties can graze all they want and Fat Kitty can't eat their food. UPDATE: I have returned this because a) it only serves food for one rotation and then stops. When you refill to start again, you have to wait a full day for it to starting serving. I have tricked it by changing the clock times so it thinks that it's 7 a.m. in a few minutes, but then it served 2 meals and stopped serving at all. I emailed customer service and they didn't write back in a week. This thing is a big hassle and not working the way I need it to. I bought the Petsafe feeder here on Amazon and it doesn't have any of the problems that the others do. You can manually advance it, change the program times without losing all the others, suspend feeding...it is easy and great! There are some real hassles involved with this and they stem from 3 problems: 1) You can't manually advance the feeding trays if you have to reprogram in the middle of the day (for a battery change or if you need a different schedule for your cat sitter). When you press "Start Now" it doesn't start now unless you set the first feeding to shortly after you fill up the trays. But if you don't always want to fill the trays in the middle of the afternoon, say, you are stuck. You either have to complete the day feeding Kitty manually or Kitty has to wait until the first programmed feeding time the next morning. This sucks. 2) There's no back-up battery so if you take even one battery out, or turn it off for any length of time, you will have to reprogram the whole thing. This really sucks. 3) There's no receptacle for a plug-in adapter so you don't have to deal with #2. If I'm going out of town and have to be sure the batteries will be good the entire time I'm gone so my cat sitter won't have to program it, I have to replace the batteries and then reprogram and then deal with problem #1. Aack! To solve this I am going to take it to an appliance repair place and get them to solder in stuff to make an adapter work with it. To see the method I'm using go to: [...]. I decided to use thread spools so I wouldn't have to cut wooden dowels and try to drill straight down through them. I just don't know how to solder or I can do the entire thing myself. Radio Shack has the parts. 4) There's no light on the LED display panel so trying to program this by lamplight is a nonstarter. You are basically looking at black on an olive drab background. No contrast. Maybe if you have very young eyes it would work. Also, in order to see the settings and whether the Low Battery light is on, you have to get down on the floor and peer at it or pick up and put it on a table. So unnecessary. 5) Getting the tray back into the bowl after cleaning isn't easy and it could/should be. You have to align the tabs in the bottom center but you can't see them when you're doing it. Really tedious. TIPS When you are programming be very careful about whether you are setting the clock and start times for a.m. or p.m. This panel won't show a.m., so it is easy to forget this step. It does show p.m. and so to get an a.m. start time you have to just keep punching the Mode button past midnight and then you'll see nothing where the p,m. was. Also it is very easy to forget the last step since programming is so involved. You have to choose Start Now or Start Later or it won't start up at all.

We purchased two of these feeders for our two cats a couple of months ago. The instructions are pretty easy and clear if you pay attention to them, so setup becomes easier as well. It's a little difficult to differentiate between AM and PM when your setting the times, all you have to do is watch for the little PM symbol in the corner. The only issue we had with one of them was that when we first got it, the LCD Screen display did not fully function, however, after warming up for a couple hours it now completely works. Since the purchase, I have not yet had to change the batteries, which is very nice. Both of my cats (one age 7 and one age 2) got use to this feeding system within a couple of days. I would definitely recommend the product and would purchase it again if need be.

The feeder technically accomplishes the task of delivering food to my kitty on a fixed schedule, but it is far from a convenient or elegant solution. As others have noted, the programming is clunky and non-intuitive. You'd think you could simply set it to rotate periodically every x hours, but instead you've got to program a specific time for each individual tray using only 3 buttons. Personally I'd have preferred dedicated +/- buttons rather than this gimmicky microphone thing. It has to be started again manually at the end of each cycle. Pressing one button isn't a huge deal, but you've got to sit there and wait for it to turn through all 6 trays and it seems like the underpowered motor will fail at any moment. Then there's that little plastic piece that goes between the top cover and the main assembly. Its function is ostensibly to cover the 3/4" gap left over the upcoming tray - but why on Earth doesn't the cover simply extend further so that one and only one whole tray is exposed?? Every time I fill up the feeder I've got to place this thing in exactly the right spot to do its job and that's no easy task because the little grooves that it slides into are always jammed with little bits of kibble.

I just had to write this in response to some other reviews that had so much negative to say: 1. It's very fancy compared to a simple feeder, so it's indeed complicated to set up, but took my husband no more than 15 minutes. He was able to set it up to test how it worked and quickly set it up for the weekend. 2. I would say "of course" a cat or dog might be a little put off by a motorized schedule feeder instead of the usual feeding time rituals. Practice with it before you have to use it to help the animal get the idea that food exists. We had a friend come check that it opened the first time and the cat hadn't figured it out yet. Once he showed her what it was for, she got it, no issues. I am quite pleased with it and it will be with us a long time, so long as it holds up. We've only used it once over a three day weekend so far.

It is a little time consuming to program, but the instructions are very clear. I bought 2 of these for both of my cats when I go on vacation, it has been a life saver. Update: One of the two feeders completely died so I need to buy a new one. Not sure if there is a warranty on these.