At around $150, these aren't cheap. But if you are a pet owner and you have to go away for a little while, this might be just the thing you need to keep your 4 legged family member at home and not have to send them to boarding. This particular one, I bought from Amazon. And in fact, it kinda works. Quite well actually.
So, we have a cat who can't come with us on vacation. Our little puppy can, but Smokey the cat stays home. In the past, we've either taken him to the vet for boarding or had somebody come to the house daily to feed him. With the pandemic showing no signs of going away (sigh), the vet doesn't really offer boarding anymore, and we're much less keen to have people coming into our house when we're not around. And so, a portable pet feeder it is then, coupled with a water dispenser. For a small animal like hours, this product would probably be able to feed him for up to a week (we wouldn't leave him without supervision for longer than that anyway, and he would need to have his litter changed).
This automatic feeder does exactly what it says. You install the app on your phone, put feed (dry food only, of course) into the feeder, and set up a feed schedule. You can also record your voice to call your pet for dinner, although this doesn't work very well (the feed coming out is so noisy that you can't hear the call). The feeder is sturdy, but somewhat difficult to clean, as you can see in my video:
I only have a few concerns about this feeder. Enough so that I might still need to have somebody come and check on him if we went away (even though I don't really want to). What happens if there is a power failure, or if the wifi goes down? The cat would starve. And if you have multiple animals or a larger pet that eats a lot, this dispenser probably doesn't have the capacity to cope. Nor if you have a cat and a dog for example, who require different types of food.
All-in-all, I'm happy. It's a convenience thing, and if we were only away for a day or two, this would be the perfect device to keep our little cat happy and content. And home.
Until next time,
D