What a journey! My vet recommended more puzzle feeders and moving to get rid of the free dry food (I do wet food in morning/night), both to control how much the cat eats and to give them something to do. After all, in the wild food is not free, they have to hunt for it.
One they recommended was something like [0] which is what I've been using. Works pretty well in that most of the time the cat knows he can't get food from me (though smart enough to know I fill them up and hide them). Adds a little game and great if you'll be out of the house for a while. So there's no longer a bowl for dry food at all, he has to "hunt" for his mice. Though I'm guilty of sometimes giving some bonus food, I think it is a helpful system. I think he'd be all over an autofeeder just like in this story (already have to hide the big dry food bag as he'll get into it).
We have a ball feeder, but this ends up not being a problem; he eats every scrap of the food that comes out, even if there are smaller crumbs. I guess it helps that we feed him on a wood floor, not carpet, too.
True, there can be a few bits here and there. Used to have some food left around but now he seems better at getting all of it. And I try not to fill them up too much anyway. The ones I linked have an adjustable opening, so I use the smallest setting, lets less food out at once which helps in this area too.
Something to be careful of is where you put it. For a while I would put them on the rugs, or hidden near rugs, and he would eat on the rug. I think this led to ingesting too much crap (fibers, hairs, whatever) which led to some, uh, clingers, shall we say. Since moving exclusively to hardwood floor areas, it has gone away.
I’m so grateful for our two - we just leave out big bowls of dry food, they eat a bit here and there, never excessively, and both are lean and happy. I figured it was because they were secure that there would always be more food - and it seems to be the case, as I recommended to a friend who was new to cats that they do the same, and their guys behave likewise.
> I figured it was because they were secure that there would always be more food
I’ve lived with quite a few different cats in my day. It’s simply the individual cat. Some cats overeat if allowed, some don’t. It’s certainly nice when you have one that doesn’t, but it’s nothing you did if you have one that does.
We have a cat that was briefly feral, and she will gorge anything she can get to. While we were visiting my family for the holidays, our cat sitter friend called us and let us know that she had left the bin full of dry food on the counter, and the cat climbed up, pushed it off the counter bursting it open, and gorged on a ton of food, so much that she thought the cat was having trouble breathing. She was OK though, I think at some point she vomited up some of it.
We definitely can't leave any extra food out with this one around, likewise she will try to get to people food if human backs are turned. She's calmed down a bit though, it no longer seems that she's constantly plotting how to get extra food.
I've raised 15 cats in my life and own 7 now. It's almost purely genetic. Right now I have 6 trim cats and one fat cat and I feed them all the same way. I've had one other fat cat that passed away, same story.
We have four cats and 2 of them require special food (kidney and allergies), and of the other two one of them will eat any food he can find most of the time while the other wanted to be in control of her own food to the point where she would do the thing where she scratched at the side of the bowl trying to bury it, presumably to keep it from the other one.
So just leaving some bowls out didn't really work for them, they'd constantly eat each others' food or eat everything as quick as possible to keep it from the other cats, with predictable (and gross) results.
We got feeder bowls that only open with the right RFID and now they're all much happier and more food secure. Sadly there's no good ones on the market I could find that do both automatic feeding and the rfid-gating, so we still have to manually feed them but for the most part they don't care when we feed them anymore except sometimes in the morning (which is the most likely time for them to run out of food).
I should say my cat doesn't really overeat, I don't think. He won't eat everything just because it is out, but did gain a little weight. I think partially from me being home all the time in the pandemic; he seems to eat more when I'm around. In the past he wouldn't eat everything in his bowl, and maybe still wouldn't but I haven't done full free feeding.
But even without worrying about eating too much, my cat definitely craves novelty and plays a lot. So I think the vet was recommending it for both reasons. He was getting too attached to going outside a lot, which I also had to curb (perhaps related).
Get one Surefeed per cat and that's not a problem any more - side benefit, you'll see when one cat suddenly eats less which may be an indicator for toothache... which can escalate into full-blown hepatolipidosis like it did with one of my old cats.
Invest 300€, save 3500€ in veterinary ICU costs down the road.
I suppose that could happen. One idea is that you just hide them at one time, so even if they see one they won't see the rest if they get distracted eating the other. Over time they'll learn food is around for them to find.
One trick I do is to fill and hide the mice when he's eating his wet food. Nothing will distract him from that! But he's also learned that I do fill them, but won't just give it to him. He might try a quick snack when I'm filling one up but otherwise knows he'll get them somewhere else later.
GRANT: Do they show intelligence? With their brain cavity...
MULDOON: They show extreme intelligence, even problem-solving intelligence. Especially the big one. We bred eight originally, but when she came in she took over the pride and killed all but two of the others. That one... when she looks at you, you can see she's working things out. That's why we have to feed them like this. She had them all attacking the fences when the feeders came.
SATTLER: But the fences are electrified though, right?
MULDOON: That's right, but they never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fences for weaknesses, systematically. They remember.
In the case of some puzzle or hidden feeders (in my other comment), my cat definitely remembers where I've hidden them before. I can watch him go through spots in order to see if it is there first, before trying less used or new ones.
Its amazing how the iteration of test and fix turns into armor plated cat feeders and armored-up code. You look at the end point and go "surely that wasn't necessary", but anyone who was around for the development knows that it was just the iterations dictating a crazy looking but complete solution.
I sub to Quinn's youtube channel on the subject of metal machining, and recommend it if you're into that kind of thing. https://www.youtube.com/c/Blondihacks
Quinn is both a skilled maker and a wonderful teacher (not to mention having a superb wry sense of humour). The channel is one of the most informative places on "maker youtube". Quinn's amazing!
> You might say I’ve won this battle. However I just spent 20 hours armor-plating a cat feeder. I think we know who’s really in control here, don’t we?
The stuff we do for our pets.
I use this nifty feeder/hopper in conjunction with an outlet running ESPHome for scheduling:
Thousands of years ago felines decided to domesticate the hoomans for two reasons: continuous and scheduled supply of food and door opening functionality on demand.
> Interestingly, Sprocket has shown zero interest in probing this new feeder for weaknesses. It’s almost as though there’s a psychological effect of the imposing structure that is keeping her from even trying.
Imagine this effect worked on people. Could architecture or user interfaces be designed to dissuade people from probing their weaknesses. Where would it be used? To what effect? Just a silly thought.
I would've stopped at the part where the cat can make them fall one by one with her paw.
Let her grab food that way, that will make her busy longer than when dropping the meals.
Do we know whether it's potentially possible to rewire cat behavior, or are their brains set in stone after some time?
- Like in the TFA, food insecurity
- Un-feralizing cats reliably
It seems that cats are odd one out with respect to adaptation. Dogs can have temporary issues when adapting to new owners or envinonments, but given some time they can cope. Even wild animals we don't consider domesticated can adapt better than cats.
I don't even know where to start with this. Do you really believe cats are somehow uniquely incapable of adaptation or learning?
House cats are, for whatever reason:
- very routine driven,
- very sensitive to food availability,
- get bored really easily.
This combination means that if you regularly disrupt those things you force the cat to constantly adapt. Most animals (including humans!) don't deal well with that.
Honestly I think most bad behavior for cats is that third point. People think because they're smaller than dogs they're ok with tiny uninteresting spaces but that's not really how they work. Especially if you have more than one, but if you do only have one then they're gonna get incredibly bored.
Anyways, in my house we have 4 cats and we managed to "train" them into more or less free feeding from all being pretty food insecure by just using rfid-controlled feeder bowls that only open for the right cat, so there's some anecdata for being able to change cat behaviour.
> This combination means that if you regularly disrupt those things you force the cat to constantly adapt.
I did not imply regular disruption. But take this example - I have read/heard about semi-feral cats which were regularly fed for over a year by somebody before allowing to be touched. At this rate you could make it so for wild animals typically found at human settlements like squirrels and corvids. So, no change after the beginning, yet it took a year for the cat before realizing humans are friendly.
> Honestly I think most bad behavior for cats is that third point. People think because they're smaller than dogs they're ok with tiny uninteresting spaces but that's not really how they work.
On that one I have to agree - some people are surprised their cats ignore them, but they don't play, especially to spend energy during the so called zoomies.
> But take this example - I have read/heard about semi-feral cats which were regularly fed for over a year by somebody before allowing to be touched.
This is true of individual cats, but not at all for cats as an entire species. I regularly feed semi-feral cats and even took one in. There is tremendous variety in how long it takes before they'll let you touch them. In some cases, it's never. In some cases, it's right away. I'd reckon an average case is maybe about a month. It presumably depends heavily on individual personality plus whatever history of trauma from other large animals and people they have already experienced before they ever met you.
I guess cat doing cat things i.e. hunting does not require much intelligence, just sharp senses and nimble body.
This is indeed very weird species. On one hand you have your regular cats which are going to shit themselves if you ever wash their cat bed and the scent is gone, on the other one you have quite brave, sociable and intelligent breeds that have no problem being walked, or even being a travel companion.
As we have pretty much have figured out dogs, it's an embarrassment we haven't figured out cats.
I half expect the cat to be securing a supply of explosives. "finally convinced her to give up" ... there's a touch of tragedy in that. "We had this lovely game, human, until you spoiled it."
I feel like the arguments laid out on this website are pretty poor and border on nonsensical without sources to back up any of the claims. Are there any sources to back up any of the claims here? Why should we believe this?
To refute this website by googling I easily found a fairly well sourced article claiming that the two are basically equivalent and there’s no conclusive research showing dry food is worse for health: https://www.veterinarypracticenews.com/cats-and-food-septemb...
"Soy contains phytoestrogens and soy also negatively influences the thyroid gland"
Sorry, stopped reading here. Do you have a source that isn't verging on anti-science nutbar crap? Genuinely interested in the health benefits, but after reading that sentence I can safely say that any claims on that site are suspect at best. The only other times I've run across the soy/phytoestrogen argument have been from anti-vaxxers or Alex Jones level conspiracy BS. And the constant references to Man's ignorance definitely didn't help.
Yup, that kibble crap is no good. You (hopefully) wouldn't eat Bachelor Chow, why feed it to your pet? It's barely even a cost issue with cats, their body weight is so low compared to people.
There's definitely some that are. I pet sitted the cat of a friend which had a feeder and the cat always tried to do the same technic of putting his paw into it and it never worked. The crazy thing is that it was clearly a cheap product as it was powered by USB and both side of the cable was USB A.
One they recommended was something like [0] which is what I've been using. Works pretty well in that most of the time the cat knows he can't get food from me (though smart enough to know I fill them up and hide them). Adds a little game and great if you'll be out of the house for a while. So there's no longer a bowl for dry food at all, he has to "hunt" for his mice. Though I'm guilty of sometimes giving some bonus food, I think it is a helpful system. I think he'd be all over an autofeeder just like in this story (already have to hide the big dry food bag as he'll get into it).
[0] https://docandphoebe.com/