Crestuff 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.