Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We left Zippy Cat home alone for a holiday weekend with a large bowl of food that he ate entirely in one sitting thus leaving him hungry for the next couple days. After pigging out on that bowl of Zippy Chow he stood by the back door meowing as loud as he could until the neighbor came over with a bowl of food to shut him up. A few days after we returned our neighbor told us of the annoying orange screamer and how she fed him. This is when we knew we had to get an auto-feeder. We went on Amazon and found one that looked nice, at the around $30 it would feed him twice a day for up to 4 days which would be enough. We decided to read the reviews and see how others liked it. Well, when we read the review that said "My rabbit figured out in five minutes how to get the food out of it" we knew this would not be the one for us and our constantly starved cat. My search continued until we saw the PetSafe feeder. The reviews were positive and people said their pets could not get the food out. It was a lot more than we had planned to spend and it was larger than we had wanted but we knew we could not have our neighbor making us feel guilty and our cat getting fatter. We ordered it. We unpacked it and after a little work had it set up and programmed to feed Zippy Cat twice a day. It worked great and off we went on for the next holiday weekend. No issues. We were going to put it into the cupboard and only use it for when we were out of town but realized that while we were making dinner Zippy Cat was not meowing incessantly at us for food. Instead he would sit in front of the feeder and stare at it like he had just met God. Finally, peace and quit while making dinner, it was nice and the feeder stayed on the job 24/7. We did find that you have to fill the hopper with food now and then, there is no electronic warning. The cat will however start screaming at you over and over and over until you realize that he has not had a meal in the last three feedings. I guess no matter how much you spend on the cat and it's feeder you can still be a bad cat owner. Just remember to "Prime" the chute after it runs dry or the cat won't eat for a while again. The warnings will continue after a short break. All that aside the cat worships the thing, he sleeps near it and rubs his head all over it. It's now his best friend and if anything ever happened to it... While out of town on day three the phone rings, it's the friend who is staying at the house for the week while we are gone but could not be there until day three. She asks, "Where is the auto-feeder". "Right where it always is, why?" "Because it is missing. Can Zippy Cat move it?" "No" "Well, it's not there or anywhere in the house" Zippy Cat has a CatMate Elite cat door that reads the RFID in him and/or a tag he wears so that he is the only animal that can come through his door (no one likes uninvited guests, more on that later). The feeder will not fit through that so where it went was a mystery. After talking to her for a while we realized that she had come home and opened the door to the deck and passed out on the couch. We told her to go looking for it as we have a family of six raccoons that live around our house and thought maybe they had something to do with it. Sure enough she found the feeder in the driveway, over 100' from where it started. Through the kitchen, entrance way, living room, past the couch with sleeping stoner guest, out the door, over the rail, through the garden, and out the driveway. When she told us we figured it would be a lost cause and we would have to order a new feeder, but surprisingly that was not the case. It was scuffed up, the ring for the dish was broken, the batteries still in it and the clock still functioning. We figured the 12 pounds of precious Zippy Chow would have been raccoon fodder but that was not the case. Even a family of masked burglars with thumbs could not get the tub open and the Zippy Chow out of the PetSafe Hopper. We're sure Zippy Cat was standing near by shouting instructions to them hoping for a share of the take that he never received. We were amazed. Soon after this incident Zippy Cat found a way to stick his paw up the chute and get a little of the next meal out. We knew there had to be a problem as we had never taken the unit apart after the critters absconded with it so we figured there might actually be some damage after all. We took it apart and found that the flapper that keeps the furry things out was not attached and only needed to be put back on. A little cleaning and refilling and a DST adjustment and all is well. Now if we could just explain DST to our cat... Pros - Raccoon Proof Feeds our cat Cat no longer annoying while we are making dinner Runs on batteries Quiet. Enough so as to not wake stoner friend on couch (even when being dragged through house) Tough Cons- Not heavy enough to keep raccoons from walking off with it Runs out of food on occasion and has no warning feature (although cat seems to come equipped with no food warning device) Large (not small but somehow not large enough, see above) Not loud enough while being dragged through house to wake up stoner friend passed out on couch (maybe a raccoon alarm is needed on unit) Bowl keeper ring kind of flimsy and hard to remove for repair Programing not simple or intuitive We highly recommend this PetSafe feeder and would buy again when the raccoons figure out how to carry it further.