Posted December 30, 2004
If, over the holidays, you traveled a bit and had to rely on a friend to feed your cat for a few days—and you felt sort of bad about imposing—then consider investing in the Cat Mate C50 for the new year.
The Cat Mate has hidden compartments for four meals and a hard plastic cover for those compartments; the cover rotates open and the hidden compartments come into view according to a battery-operated timer that you set manually on a dial. You can set any feeding time you wish for each of the next four days, and at those times on those days, the cover will rotate open, exposing a specific day’s meal for Miss Kitty’s or Sir Cattington’s delectation. The lid and partitioned container are dishwasher-safe. The whole thing is incredibly easy to set up, and it takes a single AA battery which triggers a visual indicator to let you know when it’s starting to run out of juice. It works best with dry food, obviously, though there are two removable cooler-style ice-packs you can freeze and stick in their compartments within the Cat Mate to keep the slop fresh (though I wouldn’t try it with more than a day’s worth of wet food).
It is, of course, cruel to leave a cat alone for days and days—so you wouldn’t really want to use the Cat Mate to the full extent of its full 96-hour programmability. Also, this simple, sturdy automatic cat feeder will not prevent your kitty from destroying your upholstery in retaliation for abandonment.
$46.99 (on sale from $49.99) at PetGuys.com.