Cat Mate C500 Automatic 5 Bowl Digital Timer-Controlled Pet Feeder - for Cats and Small Dogs, Wet or Dry Food, Includes Twin Ice Packs, 5 Meals Up to 0.73 lb Each, White

I really like this product. This product is amazingly well-made, well-designed, and easy to clean.. It’s easy to fill, easy to program and has a great variability. I tried the ice packs for a day, and it kept my food, cool, and fresh for the dogs. I also got the addition of the stainless silver inserts, and would highly recommend them. They are individual stainless steel inserts, and it makes it much easier to fill, rearrange in the holder, and clean. It did not take my dogs long to learn to use it, or what the turning sound meant. When you have multiple meals in the container, they can smell them, and my dogs were very curious about trying to get into the other meals. My dogs are small. If you have large dogs, they might be able to break in. My only CAUTION is, this may not be good for multiple dogs. I have two litter mates. They get along very well. However, this caused them to exhibit food aggression. The primary problem is no matter how you set the clocks, the units do NOT open at the same time. That made my larger of the two siblings be able to get to one unit, eat the food, and then go guard the other unit until it opened 15 seconds later. So, the smaller of the two dogs didn’t get food. (I was very careful, and had both units programming at the same time; hitting the buttons on both units at the same time, to make sure they were synced.) After resetting it multiple times, I had to give up. If your animals occupy separate rooms when you’re gone, you would be fine. So, despite the fact that I couldn’t use them for my dogs, if you have one dog, or if you have 2 dogs that are not particularly food motivated, they would probably work fine for you.

I love these feeders! I have two, plus an extra four cold packs. I can set up the next day's breakfast before bed and they'll get breakfast on time even if I sleep late. The same works for their dinner, which they can eat on time even when I'm gone for an evening meeting. My cats tend to hide when a stranger is in the house. With these feeders, my pet sitter can come in, clean and fill the feeders, and leave. The cats can then feel comfortable coming out of hiding at meal time. If you plan to use them, use them all the time. That way the cats learn to expect the compartments to open on schedule. They are easily programmable to fit your schedule. 5 compartments mean you can leave one empty and have up to 4 meals ready to be delivered at appointed times. The removable feeding trays and cold packs are easy to clean, tough plastic. They are powered by 3 ordinary AA batteries, so you don't have to worry about a power outage while you are gone. Mine have been running for 14 months on the first set. Get an extra set of cold packs so one set can be in the freezer while the other set is in use. I think they make another model with 3 compartments for those who only want to load 2 meals at a time. Even when I was home, my cats used to wake me up at 6 AM on a Saturday morning to feed them. Now they'll let me sleep. What a blessing!

This worked for my cat when she is indoors for the night or when we're gone for the day and she's outside. However, if you use wet cat food, it can get messy and ants are attracted to the food. I think it's better for dry food. It is easy to figure out how to set and reset the timer and easy to clean and store also.

So, first I just bought one as a test to potentially solve a problem. I needed a solution for my mom's cat to get medicines he suddenly needed (via wet food) - of course with terrible timing - during a pandemic situation while locked down in a memory care facility that has limited resources and already-overwhelmed caretakers who aren't necessarily cat people or authorized to give mom's cat meds anyway. For context, mom cannot take care of this cat on her own so we'd normally have cat pros come in twice a day to ensure he's got all of his needs covered but we cannot do that during a pandemic lock-down, for the safety of all residents & employees in the facility. Mom's memory care community is somewhat nearby and so I figured I could drop this off cold & fully loaded every other day so he'd ideally get his meds (in wet food) 12 hours apart without any confusion or fuss. So, I purchased this, set the timer to rotate the food tray every 12 hours (4 meals total, leaving the 5th space empty) and placed the frozen ice packs in at the time of delivery to mom's home. And it worked!!! Like a charm. Hector the cat was happy, and on his way back to maximum health. A very promising situation indeed. So, happy with those results, I then bought 2 more machines on Amazon along with extra cold packs and even found extra trays directly on the company's website. This allows me to keep rotating machines or trays every other day (plus ice-packs daily) and occasionally drop off an extra pre-filled tray for mom's fridge so we can arrange for one of her more cat-inclined caregivers to simply swap trays & ice-packs when I need a break. (We found a silicon cover to cover the extra 10" tray, to keep those back-up med-meals fresh in her fridge. Btw, we also checked that the meds could be maintained refrigerated or frozen before doing this). To clean, it's super simple. I just wipe down the machines & ice-packs with soap and water (careful not to get the mechanical / battery area too wet) and pop all the trays into the dishwasher. Thanks to the redundant trays we purchased, I can also let my dishwasher fill up before needing fresh trays since we have enough on hand. All that said, I probably didn't need to buy a 3rd machine to pull this off though. I only use two of them on rotation, along with 5 trays and 10 ice-packs, and it's been a few months now with no problems, and no battery changes. So, my 3rd machine is just sitting around collecting dust in my closet as a back-up in case we ever need to add batteries for use on the fly. If I could have done it all over again, I probably just would have bought an additional tray in place of that 3rd machine. The delivery was so fast that we probably can get one when needed if any of these break down the line. Overall, this has been such a great experience and these little machines are a total lifesaver in what at first seemed like an impossible situation. My mom would have been devastated to have to give up her cat and I'm so grateful that this little contraption made it possible for them to stay together without compromising anyone's health or safety (including the cat's!).

Had er extra besteld voor de voederbak van de katten

Perfect! Purchased as spare for cat mate in the hotter seasons.

Good product

Fonctionne très bien Bon rapport qualité/prix

Easy to use, good sized food trays, easy enough to clean, the icepacks are a nice touch and it's been very reliable so far. No more being woken up early by hungry cats. I find you can also freeze food in the trays as well as using the ice packs to get a couple extra days worth of feeding. Makes it very useful for trips that might last around 4 days (depending on the weather). Took a while for the cats to get used to food magically appearing without having to meow at me, but they figured it out eventually.