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I've been using the PetMate LeBistro feeders for years. I got my LeBistros initially thinking that they might deter my cats from waking me up for breakfast before I was ready to wake up. They worked well to that end, but the LeBistros were problematic from the start: They'd sometimes jam up & fail to distribute food, the cats figured out how to stick their paws up & get extra food in between meals, and one stopped working altogether after about a year.
I decided to try this feeder as a possible alternative to the LeBistros. I've only had it working for one day, so these are initial observations. First, the positives: The cats cannot reach up & steal food. The food hatch closes completely, so there is no way a cat can get more food than is distributed.
This feeder was somewhat difficult to program, but no more difficult than LeBistro, and perhaps easier. In addition, some sites advertise the minimum portion size as 1/4 cup, others advertise it as 1/2 cup. Nevertheless, the instructions do specify 1/4 cup and I programmed it for that amount. However, the amount dispensed seemed significantly more than that, though the cat scarfed the food down before I could dish it into a measuring cup to assess that for sure.
EXPERIMENT FOR MULTI-CAT HOUSEHOLDS
I'm also trying an experiment with this feeder... I have three cats. I could buy three feeders (I had two LeBistros when I had two cats) but besides the expense and the space required for multiple electronic feeders, the biggest consideration for me is ensuring that each cat is getting his/her fair share. I could never set my feeders to go off at EXACTLY the same time. Inevitably, one would go off first, and the fastest/most aggressive cat would quickly consume the food in that feeder, and, then, when the second feeder went off, that same cat would run to that feeder leaving the more mild mannered cat without food.
I thought about retrofitting the dish to make it wider so that all three cats could eat out of the bowl at the same time (and, of course, adjusting the amount of food dispensed at each meal) but I'm not so crafty. A friend suggested I try removing the dish (it comes off easily), putting the feeder up on a stool, and putting a dish large enough for the three cats to eat out of underneath. I tried it with an 16" oval serving dish and it worked pretty well. Because the feeder is (now) up on a stool, initially some of the food bounced off the dish. I replaced it with a larger, 18" oval serving dish with deeper sides. That helped. I'm still playing with this idea, but, so far, so good.
*Initially, I put the feeder on an 8" stool with the oval serving dish below. I just switched the stool for a 2" cardboard box, mostly to limit food bouncing out of the serving dish. At the same time that I don't want the food to bounce off, I also don't want it to just dispense into one single pile I want it to spread in the dish so all three cats can eat without having to shove each other's noses out of the way.
If I can feed all three cats at the same time with this one Feeder, it will have been very well worth it!
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