Wordless Wednesday - Well that was weird

Sponsored Post - Pet Feedster Automated Pet Feeder For Cats

I was contacted at the end of last month by Caroline Park of Winoe Corporation asking if I would be interested in reviewing the Pet Feedster Automated Pet Feeder. Since I am a raw household, The Crew didn't have much use for it, but with the foster kittens eating anything and everything donated to them through the shelter, I thought it would be great for them. After a bit of back and forth she sent me one and I went to set it up the night it arrived.

What's this?

Iz this for sitting?

kittens added for size
 oh who am I kidding, I couldn't get a photo without kittens unless I took it outside

Hopper large enough to fit one whole kitten
(or 10lbs of food, which ever gets in there first)

The item came mostly assembled. The feeding tray fits snugly over two tabs to hold it securely in the front. The tabs also extend down to the ground so you can screw it down if you feel the need. I was pretty sure the kittens couldn't knock this over (and they tried really REALLY hard) since it weighs seven pounds empty

One of the selling points on this feeder is that it is ant proof. There is a tray on the bottom that this fits on to and you can fill it with some water and vinegar to prevent the ants from walking up into the machine. Another selling point is that it holds up to 10 lbs of food. While I'm not a fan of you leaving your pets alone for long periods of time, there are other reasons to put 10 lbs of food into an automated feeder (like not wanting to fill it every day, or not wanting to store the bag of food).

This unit is programmable to dispense food up to five times per day. You do that by programming three settings, the time (in military time so no worrying about am/pm), the time you want the food to dispense, and then how much food. You do that all with just three buttons

Just added the optional shoot protector to keep cat paws from reaching up into the machine

the timer and controls

Programming does not require a masters degree, but it does need some manual dexterity and some patience. I was disappointed the controls were on the front of the machine and not the top, as I thought it would have been a heck of a lot easier if it was, but hopefully you aren't going to have to do this too often. This machine can run on either your standard electrical outlet or 6 D batteries (which should last you for six months). You would probably want to do both, because a simple power outage will wipe the memory and you will need to reprogram it all over again. :(

At first I had it dispensing the full amount of food in one program, but I thought that wouldn't be much fun for the kittens, so I cut it down in thirds and had it dispense at 1 am, 11 am and 3 pm. Since the unit does not have a sensor, it will not know when it overflows, so I was trying to be conservative. I normally give the kittens canned food at 8 am and 8 pm. I gave them enough canned food to cover them through the first day and left to see how it would work. Sadly, I forgot to turn the webcam back on that night, so I didn't get to capture the first feeding with it, but they had heard it go off when I was in there and it didn't frighten them at all. When I went and fed them in the morning it was obvious they had been nomming on the food. I was able to capture this the next morning at the 11 am feeding.

You can hear it isn't the quietest thing on the planet, but that can also be a positive because it can 'call' to your pets to let them know it is feeding time. When my Em was suffering from cancer, I got her a magnetic cat door and installed it in one of the bathroom doors so she could go in and nibble on food throughout the day without the other chowhound cats eating all on her. Well the sound of the magnetic door unlocking called to all of the other cats in the house to follow her in.. which was both amusing and frustrating.. but I am getting off track. The sound can be of help.

One nice thing about this product is it's adjustability. There are so many different types of kibble on the market from 3/16 to 3/4 inch sized kibble. This product has the ability to adjust for that and lets you set that manually on the auger inside.

A few not so good things, the power cord was very thin. A lot of cats are cord chewers, and a cord that thin simply begs to be chewed on. You can run it on batteries only, but those are very expensive to replace every six months, and yet are really are kind of necessary because unplugging the unit for more than two seconds wipes everything out of the program. I suppose if you live in a community where you never ever lose power, that would be one thing. It might have been good if they had two separate battery options, one for the timer to save the program in case of a power outage and one to run the machine, but that is me dreaming. I would also really would have liked the programming panel to be on the top of the machine. There are probably mechanical reasons why it is where it is, but in order to program it I had to lay it on the side to get the right pressure on the buttons and see what the display was reading. Since the power cord is a simple insert (like your laptop cord) into the machine, I was fearful of it being knocked out when programming and again when re-positioning it on the ground. If I had the D batteries on hand (not included in the unit) it would have been a little less concerning to me, but really, this is a minor issue (even though I feel like I'm harping on it).

The device worked very well, the kittens were not afraid of it, and it was nice to know they were not going to run out of dry food, and if they got on a kick and ate it all, it would only be a few hours before they would get more. If you have a kitty (or dog) that needs small regular meals and you feed dry food, this might be a really nice addition to your home.

I am unsure if I am going to be keeping this around for the kittens. The footprint of the device is a little larger than I really have room for in this set up. The unit is 17 1/2” high, 13” wide, and 18” from front to back including the food bowl. If I had the batteries for it (or were willing to invest 10-12 dollars for it) I could set it up wherever I wanted in that room, but at the moment we are confined to just two places near an outlet. Then there is the thinness of the cord and the love of kittens to chew such things. But the biggest reason I think I might rehome this is because I think this would be an awesome thing for the shelter to have for their feral cat population. Because it can run without a power source, they could put it in their feral barn, but I haven't decided yet.

After I formed my opinions, I went over to Amazon and read the reviews. They have almost universally glowing reviews. There were a few unhappy customers, but the company replied to all of them offering to help out. One less than five star review even said the designer of the product talked to them about the issue. Talk about your good customer service. Very few products can make every single person happy, so a few not so good reviews in this particular case were nothing to distract from this product.

Another consideration is the price. At over $200, this isn't something you pick up on a whim. There is a year warranty on it, and the company stands behind it's product, so if this is something you are in the market for, I would recommend you take a second look at this one.

(bonus kitten video - it has nothing to do with the product, but I love watching Pan attack Happy Bear's eyes)

This post is the result of the company furnishing me with a Pet Feedster free of charge, but the opinions are all my own.

*edited to add that Caroline contacted me after reading my review and wanted you to know the programming should remain in the device if unplugged.  That was not my experience, but she asked that I share with you that this is how it is designed to work. Maybe the programmed times remain, as I did not reprogram it because I did my unplug experiment the night before the kittens were to go back to the shelter and were supposed to not be getting food after midnight anyway, but the clock definitely reset to zero.

(also edited a few spelling errors that spell check didn't catch for me last night)

Good luck sweet kittens

I am returning the kittens today, and they will be neutered and go up for adoption most likely for this weekend. If all goes well they will be in homes before the weekend is over. They are such outgoing purring kittens, I can't imagine anyone not snapping them up.

I thoght about keeping them longer, but darn it if these kittens aren't a wee bit overwhelming. They adore getting into trouble and despite that room being kitten safe, they still are making me roll my eyes. That photo from yesterday? Molly the little black girl kitten climbed into the wardrobe and then punched through the back and would not come back through.  It took two of us to tease her enough to grab her. She was the first kitten ever to do this.  To make things even more interesting when I opened up the kitten room door to call my husband to help Pan bolted through the door and I didn't even notice. Fortunately my husband didn't hear me the first time so I had to call again, and that is when I saw him hanging out with Twee oh so pleased with himself. *rolls eyes*

Fortunately yesterday they were tired when I visited them, and I was able to get some photos.  I've got enough to get a few more posts out of it, but I thought I'd share the shots of them 'sitting still' if you will, so you can get a good look at them.

Sorry Princess, but I promise, you will like your new place more.. you'll have your own people and your own house and your own bed that the people sleep in for you.. You might even have little people for you to play with..

Wordless Wednesday - the kitten, the husband and the wardrobe..

Trust us Tiger Lily. This is not the way to Narnia. Now Molly knows this for certain

An update on the kittens

I have names now.  The long haired girl came with a name, Tiger Lily.  She was such a princess though I had to know if there was a Princess Tiger Lily, and interestingly enough there is one..  She is from Disney's Peter Pan, which opened up the door for names for my little "formerly faeries" kittens..

Princess Tiger Lily

Pan

Molly

Mr. Smee

We had a bit of a scare with Smee this weekend. I didn't spend a lot of time with them Friday morning, and when I went to see them in the afternoon Smee was very quiet and isolating himself.

Post by Tails from the Foster Kittens.

It took a bit to figure out what was going on, but he was not weight baring on his left front leg and he had a fever of 103.3. I called the shelter and was unable to reach anyone, but since he did eat, and was bright eyed and purred and went pee for me, I figured he could wait until the morning. In the morning he was still limping so I took him into the shelter when he went about trying to make a fibber out of me.  They did eventually see him limp a little and ended up taking his temperature which was 101.9.  They decided the best option since he was so improved was to 'wait and see'.  I brought him home and he was very quiet all day, but happy..

Today he is seeming a bit better.  Still quieter than he has been, but limping less. Interestingly enough they all switched from canned food to dry just as this happened.  They were easily eating six cans of wet food each day and gobbling up the dry when it wasn't enough. They went down to three or four cans and consumed far more dry food. It was just weird. Hopefully he will continue to improve because they are scheduled to be neutered on Thursday.

And We Danced

Hit play before continuing..

Oct 5 -  Oct 12th

Would you like to see the kittens leap some more?

I got a toy to review and I thought it would be fun to do so with photos of leaping kittens. Sadly the toy had some issues, so I'm not going to review it without talking to the company and two days after emailing them about my issues they haven't emailed me back so I'm just going to let you watch them leap.

Wednesday's post were some of the better photos I took while standing up. I thought it might be hard to see just how off the ground they got, so I sat down. Sadly they are so very fast and my camera isn't so I had to take autofocus off and thus quite a few of these are fuzzy, but you get the jist of the idea and can see just how goofy these guys (and girls) are.

So, I have some more.. would you like another post of leaping kittens?

Oct 5 -  Oct 12th