With 4 cats, we’ve tried several different feeders. When I first realized Tommy was tipping the scale, I bought an Aikiou. He lost a few ounces but then I got a Gatefeeder, and locked him out and let the others free feed from it. Then when we realized Stewart was overweight too, we locked Stew out.
The boys were being manually fed five times a day, by us, every few hours.
I upgraded the girls from the Gatefeeder to the Sureflap feeder. It was less difficult for the boys to break into. With the Gatefeeder, they just had to cozy up to a girl and get her to leave the feeder gently, and the door wouldn’t latch. The Sureflap always closes when the girls walk away.
Feeding 2 boys five times a day really cut into our personal lives for over a year.
Pretty penny as it was, we bought our freedom! Feed And Go has given us our days back. We purchased one for each boy and their timers go off at 6am 12noon 5pm and 9pm. I get up by 9am to refill their feeders for the day and set a manual alarm to go off shortly after. When the feeders go off they send us texts. In the texts are the link to the website where we can log into the account and turn on their webcams to see if the proper boy is at the proper feeder. 99%of the time the boys are behaving legit.
Sometimes I even turn their webcams on to watch if anyone is hanging out in the dining room or kitchen while I’m out doing errands.
And those have been our systems. I keep the Gatefeeder as a back up down in the basement.
Why does the Feed And Go work so well?
Because our boys have weight issues so they get portion control all day long in smaller meals. They can never be trusted to free feed again.