It depends on the animal. The cats we had when I was growing up always had "unlimited" access to dry cat food and water, and it was only canned stuff we'd put out at specific meal times, and they never ate themselves fat.
Some pets might eat themselves to obesity given the chance. I'm not sure the amount of effort the cat puts into trying to get more food is a perfect determinate of how much food the cat needs to be healthy.
Mine definitely would, he'd eat until he would throw up and then probably eat some more. We're pretty sure he had food scarcity before he made it to the humane society.
Yeah, you need to raise the cat from first weaning with unlimited access to food to prevent this. If they never experience a moment of food anxiety in their lives, most cats will only eat when they are actually hungry.
The majority of cats, however, have a built-in desire to eat whenever food is available, because they have not learned that it will continue to be available in the future. It's really hard to teach them this at any point after early kittenhood.
This is very common for predators as they may go several days between kills. They have to eat when they can as there is no guarantee of when the next meal will be. For that matter, it is not unusual for other animals, including humans. I am certain that an evolutionary drive to eat when food is available is a major factor behind rush obesity rates. We evolved with food shortages.
In the article he mentioned a couple times that increased food intake causes the cat to vomit. For a "lazy human" armor plating a robot, cleaning up cat vomit is the last thing he would want to do I imagine.
Quinn is a she, FTR. Also, some cats will eat themselves to obesity (and it tends to be those with this kind of appetite for food, no pun intended), so keeping a limit on their intake is important, particularly if they are house cats (not common in the UK, but I think they are more so in the US).
There's also the nasolacrimal duct to consider. Other than those little details, one of my favorite insights from studying biology is that almost all animals are basically tubes with accessory organs attached, deuterostomes and protostomes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostome :
"In animals at least as complex as earthworms, the embryo forms a dent on one side, the blastopore, which deepens to become the archenteron, the first phase in the growth of the gut. In deuterostomes, the original dent becomes the anus while the gut eventually tunnels through to make another opening, which forms the mouth. The protostomes were so named because it used to be thought that in their embryos the dent formed the mouth while the anus was formed later, at the opening made by the other end of the gut."
I recently got a SureFeed RFID feeder. It can read your cat's microchip or an RFID collar tag. When an authorized kitty approaches, a flap raises and lets the cat eat. I got it to prevent other family pets from stealing my cat's food. It works well for that purpose and seems well designed. The feeder has clear side "walls" and the flap itself acts as a wall on the rear of the feeder, helping prevent food theft during authorized feeding.
I'd like to hack it and add timer functionality. See, my cat is always trying to get breakfast early and is always underfoot from 4 A.M. until I feed him. I tripped over him and broke my ankle last month because of this. I figure, if I can load up breakfast's meal before I go to bed, and only "unlock" the feeder after 7 A.M., my cat may eventually learn to stop bugging me at night. The joke will probably be on me though, darn cats.
I'd like to use an ESP8266 for this so I can also have an IoT feeder that reports usage statistics. =P
I've got the same one and it doesn't stop cats tailgating other cats. It was however hilarious during the 'training' phase watching the stupidest of our two barrel towards the flap and go crunching into it.
Did have a good idea for gamifying it though - a cat airlock with a camera, $5 a month, getting bored old ladies on Facebook to compare the cat in the airlock and making the decision to let it through or not...
For a cheap and simple hack solution, I would imagine you could just get one of those outlet timers. That's assuming the device uses wall power, defaults to locked when unpowered, and doesn't require any user input to resume function when power cycled. Just set it to power on at 7AM and either set it to power off at the time you usually refill it, or just manually switch it off when filling.
The feeder only contains room for a day's worth of food, it doesn't have a "hopper" and isn't designed for unattended use. It's (unhacked) purpose is mostly for multiple pet households to prevent food theft or enforcing special diets.
Cats have been known to modify their purring sounds, to include a sub-carrier that is remarkably similar to an infant crying. That in turn triggers an instinctive response in humans which cause them to subconsciously rise out of bed and apply food to the source of that sound. Source: a documentary on Netflix "The Lion in your Living room".
Cats have also been known to resort to terrorism, viz., climbing onto high shelves and systematically knocking fragile items to the floor until their demands are met.
It's apparently so common that there's a game -- Catlateral Damage -- where you play a cat from a first-person perspective and score by knocking as many things to the floor as you can in a set time.
I thought it was that modern house cats have evolved to have their purring contain that similar sound, rather than that they selectively enable a sub-carrier.
One of our cats has managed to perfect saying something that sounds awfully like a distressed young child crying "mum" - I'm immune to this but it upsets my wife!
I already refuse to feed him before 7am but he still tries. He is conditioned on getting breakfast from Dad and I need to condition him to get breakfast from the machine. I'm hoping that loading it with breakfast the night before and a lock indicator LED will remove Dad from the picture and allow for that conditioning.
Don't feed your cat until 7am no matter what. Ignore all foot rubs and meows. He'll eventually learn and give up.
He'll maybe learn to give up. Or he's like one of our cats where we have to install a baby gate on the outside of the closed door to our bedroom to make it difficult for him to bang on the door all night/morning so that we can sleep.
Some mild punishment may be necessary. If a cat bothers me while I'm in bed, they get held by their scruff and moved to the floor. The cats bother my wife, but not me.
He's kind of a weirdo. He just sees punishment as mostly "attention" and doesn't mind it that much. Plus, any movement towards him in the morning is seen as "I must be getting fed now!" and he gets all excited.
We tried this with our cat for years. He had a designated feeding time. We never broke it. His internal clock is pretty good but not exact, so he starts to pester for food an hour or two before feeding time.
So he would surely wake us up if fed at 7:00am, so one solution is to feed at night. This results in a cat constantly underfoot begging for food for two hours, which is literally a tripping hazard.
The solution is to feed him from a machine and to make sure he never sees us touching the machine. Now, at feeding time he sits by the machine and stares at it, waiting for it to open.
> This results in a cat constantly underfoot begging for food
> for two hours, which is literally a tripping hazard.
We found a solution to this: Only feed the cat when an audible alarm goes off. This way they associate the onset of food behavior with the alarm, not with you.
Before putting the dish down, require that the cat lay on a designated mat. If s/he moves, pick up the dish. Eventually the cat should learn to lay on the mat for the hour before mealtime, rather than bugging you. Worked for both my dog and my cat.
My cat is almost 5 years old. She is the type to overeat to obesity, probably because she was abandoned at ~1yr by her previous owner. For half her life my partner and I have been feeding her like clockwork 3 times a day, minus all of 2-3 weeks of vacations where our roommate took over.
I have to exert a constant effort to maintain our bedroom door and the rubber that I lined on the jamb to prevent her from rattling the door at 5am to ask for food - the paint is a lost cause. We have a white noise machine. We ignore her cries for food. We ignore her pawing things off our desks. We have a system to keep track of food we give her so she can't "trick" the other person. She knows exactly when we feed her (the meows get cranked up a notch about an hour before food time) but despite not giving in, she keeps acting like meowing at us is going to go anywhere.
No luck. And we know we're not underfeeding her - she's getting the calories appropriate for her (currently normal) weight, is being fed wet food, has fresh water, lots of attention and toys, all that stuff.
Unfortunately we have to give this up because we've got a baby on the way, and it's just so frustrating to lose 2+ years of effort put into having her not weigh 18lbs...
Try an automatic feeder. I have the one mentioned in the article and didn't need to do any extra hardening to protect it from our two cats.
Even though we kept a tight feeding schedule, our cats used to start meowing and pestering us an hour before dinner time. Now, they just sit quietly and stare at the automatic feeder until it dispenses their food.
That's our eventual plan! I haven't ordered one yet since all of them have reviews about cats being able to open them up plus I have to figure out how to transition to a dry food diet again. Mine will paw at the sealed container of bonito flakes we use as treats... I'm 110% counting on needing to harden a feeder.
Second this. Our cat was clearly able to outlast my patience. At one point early-ish into our cat's tenure in our home, during a particularly persistent meowing session I said to my wife (jokingly!), "holy shit I'm going to kill this cat." To which I quickly had the sad realization that some people probably do abuse or kill their pets. So I decided to check for advice from the ASPCA.
All the kitty guides on webbernets say, "be firm and don't give into kitty's demands." Whereas I read on the ASPCA website, "buy an automated feeder."
Guess which worked? Happy automated cat feeder owner, and our cat mostly doesn't drive me insane around feeding times.
For reference, I also own this model of cat feeder and have not needed to harden, though I do have it wedged up next to a wall to lessen risk of tipping.
Fine, fine, I just ordered the Petnet feeder :) Not my first pick, but it supports the 1/16 cup portions I would need to maintain my cat's weight on the dry food that she likes most. I shall see on Christmas Day if she'll tolerate it :D
for our cat it was two simple solutions: 1, feed her about 1/3 of her daily food right before I go to bed; the later she eats the later she gets hungry. 2, when she cries for food before feeding time, I chase her around the apartment with a spray bottle spraying the shit out of her. over time it has gotten much better, not perfect but she definitely learned that crying for food = getting unpleasantly wet.
If spraying works for you that's good. In general it is not recommended to spray because cats generally don't associate punishment well with actions. They are more likely to develop fear of you and/or the object than discouragement for the related concept or activity the punishment is being doled out for.
It was certainly this way with my cat. I really regret the months of different punishments we tried on him to discourage his bad behaviors as it changed his personality.
We associate our cat's food with a phone alarm instead of any sort of bothering us. We vary the alarm somewhat over time (three different repeating alarms) so the time of day isn't quite predictable.
This seems to have worked so far to avoid the cat bothering us in the morning.
We use an SSSCat[1] device to keep the door paint(and our night-time sanity) in-tact. It's not entirely reliable but it works enough that it keeps them away from the door.
We turn it on when we close the door at night. The cats haven't figured out when it's on or off, but they have figured out if the door is open, they can run really fast past it and it won't get them.
It did stop the door scratching, but now the door scratching has turned to 5am serenades.
My cat was on a "diet" similar to yours. I just ended up giving in and letting him eat all the food he wanted, which ended up being less than expected. He just freaked out at having an empty bowl.
He's a very big strong boy now (20ish pounds) and is just very happy.
My thinking was that he's a cat and what's the point of a cat being unhappy for his whole life.
It's possible 20lbs is closer to your cat's ideal weight, since some breeds tend to run large. Mine only hit 18+lbs while we freefed her. Now she's around 12lbs, in good body condition (just a little more abdominal fat she could stand to lose).
We really had to push the weight loss because it was clear she wasn't meant to be so big. Her asthma was significantly worse when she weighed more (multiple attacks a week vs now I don't even remember the last one within the past year), and there were huge patches of her body covered in greasy dandruff because she couldn't groom herself. It would have eventually led to a lot of problems. Better for us to put up with her antics than to watch a painful death, really.
Extra abdominal fat in felines is a feature, not a bug - the 'primordial pouch'[1] which provides some extra protection in fights, and allows for a longer stride (with all four legs spread out more when running). But you know your cat best.
My cat is 18. She howls in the middle of the night to get us to play with her and bites at us when she feels too much time has elapsed since her last saucer of milk.
She is way too old to give a fuck anymore and there is nothing to indicate she will ever change at her age. Just like a human.
7am? I tried that, and they would still wake me up. I switched to evening feedings instead. My cats get fed at 9pm sharp. They only get one feeding per day and they usually make it last. That means there's still food in their bowls in the morning. It took them a few weeks to get used to it, but now we don't get woken up by the cats anymore. Well, they still jump on the bed and want a cuddle, but no more annoying crying for food.
We are 12 years in and the cat is howling away. Same feed time everyday.
She is evil. If her dinner is felt to be sub par she goes into the sleeping child and claws the kid. She has come very close to a final vet visit with this behaviour.
1. I put a hall effect sensor and another C.H.I.P. on his exercise wheel (https://onefastcat.com/) so it feeds him every few revolutions he runs (not sure if he's associated the two yet)
2. Alexa skill.
3. Daily 5am feeding to avoid the early morning hungry-cat-alarm-clock.
4. Hacked Amazon Dash button next to the bed (and IFTTT button on my phone) in case the 5am feeding isn't enough to silence the hungry-cat-alarm-clock.
So yeah, I identify with this statement "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?"
Super Feeder lets you adjust the duration of the feedings, which I think is pretty accurate, but you'll have to calibrate it for the desired weight, food size, etc.
I added the relay because I wanted more control. Normally you use a wall outlet relay or timer but then you only have one preset duration, and there's a 10 minute reset interval between feedings.
Because the feeder holds a single meal and is designed for access control (multiple pets) and not really automatic/timed feeding. A feeder with a sort of food hopper isn't too useful to me since I alternate dry/wet food for breakfast/dinner. A lockout timer would be though!
I know it sounds cruel and I didn't feel quite right doing it but this is why I walk around my cats like they're not there. After a couple close calls where I almost fell it seemed like it was worth a shot. I do slow down a bit so I carry/push them rather than kick when they're actually underfoot though. It only took a couple bonks to the nose and a time or two of being carried by my foot a few inches into the air to teach them not to do it anymore. And if you're concerned about affection they still rub against me when I'm standing still or sitting.
It does feel cruel, but it's probably safest for the cat as well as you--if they aren't afraid to get underfoot, they could be injured if you step wrong and can't stop in time.
I've used something similar to teach a kitten I had to not step on keyboards. Just pick them up and drop them on the floor every time they touch the keyboard - they learn that that touching keyboards is How You Fall Off The Desk.
Ages ago, when I was still living with my parents, we had an indoor/outdoor cat that had a habit of going to various high shelves in the house and accidentally knocking things off them.
To curb this behavior, one of us would grab him off the shelf and literally throw him outside (onto grass, maybe 6' in the air), thinking that he would associate the unpleasantness of being thrown with his unwanted behavior.
He did. He changed his behavior such that he would jump up on said shelves and deliberately knock things off the shelf whenever he wanted to go outside.
He was a great cat other than that habit though. Hands down the most social (with humans) cat I have ever owned or met and my sample size on both counts is fairly large. He made everyone he met fall in love with him and had a territory of several square miles given the phone calls from people he encountered who took him in worrying that he wouldn't get home safely (he always did, though one incident when he was gone overnight prompted us to put the home phone number on his collar due to some concerned neighbor who took him in for the night). He also once jumped into a UPS truck that was delivering a package to my parents house - I happened to be looking out the window as the truck was leaving, watched it go halfway up the driveway, stop, and see the driver toss him out of the truck.
My parents have since stopped allowing their cats outside due to the murderous relationship between cats and local bird populations.
I knew a cat that figured out how to operate a light switch so that they could stare at moths through the glass door that would show up with the balcony light on.
I think the vast majority of cat owners would consider that not only strange but cruel as well. Cats need quite a bit of room for mental well being, let alone general health, and locking them in cages at night is definitely harmful. Doing so at night, for a nocturnal animal, is doubly so. Cages are only broken out temporarily for transportation and health reasons.
haha thanks I guess :) interesting way of looking at it. Not sure why you chose to generalise it over all animals. The strange one-sided adversarial relationship I sketched is quite particular to cats and cat owners. I just don't see myself willingly entering that role.
But the relationship between dogs and humans seems a lot less alien to me. I might one day, I could use the company. But it's a lot of responsibility.
Well, apart from killing small rodents (which isn't a problem AFAIK in France), and small territory fights with other cats, there have been not problem.
For some reason, based on the OP's article, I'm imagining your other cats holding the "authorized" cat up to the machine by the neck like a shakedown. :-P Kinda like in DooM when you use a dead security guard's torso to open up a locked door.
You don't need a special device, just don't ever feed your cat when it's bugging you. You taught him that bugging you gets him food. It's probably too late now for you though lol.
That's a good way to make cats fat and eventually diabetic. On top of free feeding alone causing obesity in a lot of cats, "weight control" cat food is the worst stuff, it's mostly grains (carbs) which a cat -- an obligate carnivore -- doesn't need in its diet at all.
I can't speak for anyone else, but with the cat I used to have, that would've resulted in an empty cat feeder and a very sick cat within an evening. I had to hide absolutely anything even vaguely edible, especially (bizarrely) bread, which the cat adored and which caused it terrible diarrhoea... Not all cats are created equal!
Cat was eating so much volume she was vomiting. Weight control food doesn't help with this issue.
Additionally, my obese cat was on a very controlled amount of "diet" food for years, it doesn't actually work. Switched him to Blue Buffalo and didn't observe any weight change.
And before anyone asks, yes, the cat has been to the vet and has gotten all the blood work and I've tried multiple meals and everything. Don't even go there.
There's no such thing as "weight control" (dry) cat food except on food packaging by the crooked pet food business. The stuff invariably is full of carb, which cats do not metabolize like we do (they get their glucose through gluconeogenesis, from meat) and it's far too dry (cats on a normal diet gets the bulk of their water from "wet" food, and get much less water when on dry food, leading to kidney stones and bladder problems).
Cats are true carnivores. They shouldn't be getting dry food to begin with.
I thought the same when he said the cat was no longer interested in trying to defeat the metal box -- I bet the cat can't smell the food as strongly as it did without the box.
I've always found it easier to trick cats rather than force them to do things. But to trick a cat you must think like one. :)
I thought the same thing, and it's basically the same solution to the same problem. Bored people/cats with nothing to do -> make room fixtures impossible to tamper with.
2 of my 3 cats are quite regularly on top of the refrigerator. One likes to nap up there, and the other likes to experiment with gravity by knocking magnets off the fridge. The only reason the 3rd doesn't get up there is because she is almost 18 years old and has arthritis and can't jump anymore. When she was younger she would use the fridge as a stepping stone to get on top of the kitchen cabinets and regularly nap there. There is no such thing as a cat-proof vertical height.
anyone with more money than time and metal working skills might consider just getting a super feeder: http://www.super-feeder.com (nothing but a satisfied customer, here.)
Dissenting opinion: I owned a Super Feeder before upgrading to the feeder pictured in the original story. My cat was able to produce food from the super feeder continuously, just by lightly smacking the tall column on the top. Perhaps the kibble my cat eats is below the minimum supported size?
The new PetSafe feeder is better: it will produce a little food when kicked, but it will only drop out a bit of the next meal from the top of the ramp; in contrast, the super feeder could drain its entire reservoir through continual knocking. I also find the PetSafe a better machine in other regards (battery operated, much larger reservoir, easier to program a serving by volume).
I do think the super feeder is more hackable though, so if you're looking to do metalwork maybe it's the better fit.
huh. usually a solid rap will drop a bit of loose stuff from our super feeder, but a second one doesn't drop anything more. basically behaves as you're saying your petsafe does.
> Perhaps the kibble my cat eats is below the minimum supported size?
i do think it has some issues with sufficiently small kibble. i noticed a bit of increase in portion size variability when we moved to a smaller kibble.
did you have any luck with reducing the gate opening?
> I do think the super feeder is more hackable though
controlling it by applying power is certainly convenient. i've got an rpi which dispenses on a schedule, and lets us hit a web page to dump out some more food when the cats are complaining.
do not feed cats from a machine. Even if you are super busy, give her food in the morning and after you get home from work, that's more than enough. Perhaps at the same time as your breakfast and your dinner. Despite the common perception of cats as 'loners' , they still want to be part of your 'gang' not a lonely creature feeding from a machine.
Ideally you would want to play with the cat before feeding her so she associates food with hunting not as a cure to boredom. Even if you are too busy to do that, the act of giving your cat food can be a bonding experience for a cat that's stuck indoors 24/7. Many cat health issues can be diagnosed by keeping an eye of food habit since cats famously hide their weakness (to not signal weakness to predators, i would imagine). Free feeding cats would hide their illness till its too late to do anything about it.
Same with litter even if you use 'litter robot' keep an eye on the poop when you change the litter, common kidney diseases can be instantly identified by glancing at poop.
Unfortunately your common sense is in the minority of opinion here. HN is plagued by overeager engineers who endlessly discuss the how without addressing the much more important why.
Why bother having a pet at all if you're not going to personally care for it?
"Why" is having control over frequency and quantity. If you have an over-weight cat you may need to dial that down gently over time to avoid too much protesting.
The writer clearly indicated this is just for one meal of the day. People are losing their shit here as if this cat is locked in a room for months on end with no human contact.
The author was giving two meals a day and often got home late in the evenings. Only the evening meal was from a machine. Don't act like the cat is being abused. The author looks like she is providing the cat with a very nice life.
"Whys?" It helps prevent tripping incidents when the cat knows its food time and is rubbing on your feet as you walk. It helps with anxiety associated with irregular feedings. That's just two reasons I thought of off the top of my head.
>The author was giving two meals a day and often got home late in the evenings.
"An automated feeder would save me one chore per day, and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting home late in the evenings."
You seem to have ignored "save me one chore per day" which is what my original comment was in response too. Occasional late meal is not a big deal at all, you don't need to go about inventing ridiculous machines for that.
How do you, personally, anonymous Internet commenter, know how much stress this specific cat has when the evening meal is late?
You can give constructive comments about the benefits of manual feeding vs auto feeding without being rude and speaking in absolutes. There's certainly benefits of both options that differ with individual cats and circumstances.
def not my intention. Can you point out where i was rude so i can keep that in mind for future.
What I said of course is not true for special needs cats, do whats best for your cat if its special needs. I assumed we are talking about the 99% general case because original article didn't mention any special requirements that her cat had. I doubt anyone reading that blog would get the impression that her cat is special needs. Would you tell you someone "not speak in absolutes" to if she says "don't don't declaw your cat" ?
I know many cat owners who "play" with their cat by dangling a feather on its head, telling them to improve the play by creating intrigue and mystery during the play by hiding the source of noise is not an insult, I wouldn't think so. I made many pet owner mistakes myself. Unfortunately cats have the misguided 'easy maintenance' reputation which works against their well being.
As an owner of multiple cats, and fiance to a licensed veterinary technician, this sounds like good and sensible advice for maintaining a cat's health and well-being. We've caught many health issues by noticing changes in feeding, drinking, poo and litter box use. I don't know why you've gotten so many downvotes.
Having a feeding machine that operates on a regular schedule when your schedule is anything but does not mean you're being a delinquent pet owner. It doesn't mean you're oblivious to your pet's health.
Some people have automatic coffee makers that run on a timer. Does that make them indifferent to their own health?
I didn't read any implication of delinquency or obliviousness into the OP's post. It seemed merely informative and another aspect to think about when considering how and when to feed your pets. A disagreement is not necessarily adversarial.
An automated feeder has been actively better for my cat's health. She is eating the correct amount now. When I was feeding her by hand on a diet, she blamed me for it.
Great points. Also feeding cats only dry food can lead to kidney problems in old age - they do not naturally drink much water, instead relying on moisture from their food sources. Feed good quality canned food!
While I believe your contribution is an interesting one I recommend to not assume too much. We got 2 cats from the animal shelter, and they are not very playful (relatively speaking). They're generally afraid, tho much less nowadays.
What we do is we feed them manually, once a day, the very same amount (using the same bowl as scoop) in the evening before we go to bed (he's on a diet for FLUTD, and she has to eat the same food so she's slightly obese). This gives us the advantage that the cats are not annoying during night, and if they eat too much they'll have to wait till the evening (which means we either get annoyed during day time, or we don't notice since we're not around). We also give them fresh water at the same time.
A major issue is when we're gone for more than a day. But a cat feed machine wouldn't be adequate. Cats need fresh water as well, and enough. Refilling when it is empty isn't enough. Algae are being formed. So this requires manual labour, daily.
Very good points about monitoring your cat's inputs and outputs. My cat develops urinary tract issues about once a year and you notice the reduced appetite and litter box use. I have a Litter Robot so I do make sure to check it at least once a day. The litter box is another thing I'd like to throw an ESP2866 in so I can monitor litter box use frequency.
Any ideas on how to detect a poop versus a piss? Perhaps there are urea sensors? The mass of the litter clump would be another good data point to measure, but I don't have any ideas about how to set it up with the Robot.
My wife and I have two cats and I work out of the house and getting automatic feeders was a godsend. They used to routinely wake us in the middle of the night by meowing and jumping on us, and meow incessantly in the evenings. Our feeders give them a little bit of food five times a day and they no longer meow at us when they're hungry; they sit by their feeder and wait for the food. We cuddle with them multiple times a day and play with them as much as possible, and they are incredibly loved. I like your sentiment that cats should be more than just fixtures in our household, but I feel your advice is a bit unfair.
Similar situation here. Separating the concept of humans from food providers has been very beneficial in our household. We still give the cats a lot of attention.
I suspect this is one of those cases where it starts out as just a quick fix, and soon turns into a challenge where buying a better feeder feels too much like cheating.
A) the human feeds the cat, with delicious wet food, every morning. Many cats are only fed once daily anyway, this cat is fed twice daily.
B) When traveling, one is not at home to feed the cat, at all. If fed, cats are quite content to have the house to themselves for a few days. If a cat is disciplined about eating, you can just put a lot of food in the bowl and leave it alone while you travel. If not, you need to build a machine to dispense food, or pay another human to come by and feed the cat.
C) I often enjoy reading stories about the process of engineering (iterated problems, solutions, new problems, etc.), even if the final result is 'over' engineered.
I have a cat. I know how it works. Part of having a pet is dealing with the fact that you have to take care of it. Many people have pets and go on vacations.
>even if the final result is 'over' engineered.
This is a major issue though. It's why a lot of engineers can't translate ideas and solutions into elegant businesses...
Of course there is nothing wrong with this project, so long as you understand it completely misses solving the actual problem at hand.
"Can't" create an elegant business, or "don't care to"? Different people are motivated by different things.
Seems to me the person undertaking this cat-feeder project is the one who gets to decide whether or not they have solved the "actual problem at hand", since they are the one who decided what the problem was in the first place.
There was no neglect. Quinn bought a fancy feeder because nerds love stuff like that, right? Cat figured out how to defeat the feeder. By the time she's welding a steel enclosure for the feeder, the story has clearly moved from "solving a problem" to "I'm not going to be beaten by a cat."
neglect as in "not doing" not neglect as in "not caring". I'm not suggesting he doesn't care for the cat, I'm suggesting he's solving a symptom instead of the core problem.
I agree with both you and jdcarter. Is this silly? Sure, but isn't that also a huge part of the fun in having cats in our lives? Everything else must make sense, but not cats. As for "solving the wrong problem" - I'm sure OP isn't the first machine shop welder to turn every problem into a reason to weld.
There's no evidence that Quinn wasn't feeding her cat well,
before or after getting the robo-feeder. Many domestic animals will search out food when bored, even if they're not hungry. In this case, I think for both Quinn and Sprocket (the cat) it was all about the puzzle, and the food was just incidental.
Edit to add: despite my disagreement, I appreciate your concern for the cat. My dad's a veterinarian and my mom rescues feral cats, so I've seen a lot of malnourished and mistreated cats. It's heartbreaking how some people neglect the animals in their care. In this particular case, however, Sprocket looks very healthy.
If you're down-voted, I would suggest it's because your comment doesn't add anything substantive (which would actually improve the quality of HN), makes a common, uncharitable complaint while doing so, and mentions you expect downvotes, which is counter to the guidelines.
You also might be getting downvoted because this was already a tiresome cliché 6 years ago. Now I'm not sure what it is, but the guidelines (as old as the hills, themselves) still ask us not to post it.
I'm about to flag your comment not because it suggests the quality of discourse on HN has declined, but because it makes a net negative contribution to the quality of discourse on HN. In other words, you seem to be being the problem you perceive. Perhaps you might do otherwise.
Please don't smear the community as a whole, especially as you choose to participate in it. I imagine at least part of the motivation of the author is to have a tech project. Not everything needs to be purely practical.
ours are usually like that but the bigger one... if he can even see the bottom of the food bowl? his little cat world is upside down. i can usually just shake the bowl and set it back down and he's happy.
Had similar problems with our cat who was able to retrieve food from every automatic feeder we tried, apart from the perfect pet feeder [1] which was the only model that defeated him.
Wonder what would happen if you just gave the cat unlimited access to a large bowl of unguarded food all day every day. Would the cat eventually self-regulate the amount it ate? Or would you just end up with a really fat cat? Or both to some degree?
I have two cats, male and female. They are from the same litter, and have had the same upbringing. One is quite chubby, the other stays fairly thin. The chubby one is also naturally lazier.
This is exactly what we do with our cat. We just refill the bowl when it starts to get empty. I would say his weight is average to slightly below average. We have done this since he was a kitten so perhaps that's why it works quite well.
I do that to my cat. At first he sometimes ate until he throws up, but now he learned not to eat too much at once and prefer to eat little by little throughout the day.
His sibling on the other hand would eat quite a lot, but only if the food is fresh out of the bag, so ultimately she doesn't eat that much throughout the day.
If, instead, the cat were trying to turn everything into paperclips it might be harder to combat its efforts because you'd never figure out what it was trying to do beyond causing chaos.
I had a simple auger-fed model for our cat. I realized very quickly she could reach up there and get food meant for the next cycle... and eventually realized I didn't care. If she takes the food intended for the next cycle, less comes out next, and if she goes into the next meals portion again, she's getting the same amount of food, and some stimulation for free trying to get it out.
I thought this too! Except our cat never lost any weight, and seemed to be getting fatter, until we put the feeder in a laundry basket, and now they can't get access anymore and have slowly been losing weight.
The laundry basket is the tall type, with a hole cut in the bottom and a funnel installed, plus a chute screwed on for good measure. It's mounted on the wall, raised about 1ft, so they can't get their grubby little paws in there.
The problem-solving abilities of that cat are pretty impressive. I couldn't imagine my cat bracing himself against a table and picking up the whole feeder with his teeth, I wish there had been a video of that.
The creativity and versatility of even a "simple" biological intelligence is a humbling reminder of how much work we have ahead for AI research.
Let me Dungeon Master this for you: You're trapped in a few rooms all day, every day. You don't know how to read. Your best friend is gone or asleep for 17 hours a day. You're a little bored, but you're also not very smart, so it's kind of okay. But you do have a lot of time on your paws.
There's a weird contraption that feeds you twice a day. And you can see food still up there, on the conveyor belt.
My wife and I personally think it's borderline inhumane to keep a dog by itself all day, since they are extremely social.
While we usually don't keep solitary cats, I don't think it's that uncomfortable for cats to be alone, though per your DM interpretation, they will commonly get into things. Which they will do in groups too.
Some cats do much better when they have other animals or cat friends to socialize with. It depends on a number of factors, and much like human, not every cat is the same.
The amount of desired human attention sought from cats in our household has has decreased as the number of cats in the has increased. That's not to say they don't still want our attention, or that we don't give it to them. Having friends to keep busy seems to make the days go by easier.
I have a pair of cats (sibling boy and girl), girl cat is cuddly and wants attention, boy cat is solo and likes been on his own and rarely wants a fuss, both miss the other if they aren't their even if they rarely bother with each other.
When the boy went to be neutered, the girl spent the whole day going from room to room meowing and looking in his usual spots.
When she went to be fixed, he did the same.
I'll probably never have a single cat again (some of that is that they are used to each others presence I'm sure) since they are excellent company for each other.
Cats also have no problem whatsoever spending sixteen hours a day unconscious, merrily dreaming about whatever cats tend to have dreams about. Closer to twenty as they grow older.
This is the most insightful comment I've seen on HN in a couple of days. This is exactly the kind of thinking that UX designers and PMs taking bug reports need to exercise!
Smartphones, laptops and desktop computers should be able to dispense food to humans as rewards. That would revolutionize UX design and human computer interaction.
> There's a weird contraption that feeds you twice a day. And you can see food still up there, on the conveyor belt.
Or smell it. Consider that cats have better smell than us, and that cat food is designed to smell especially good and addicting to cats. Then that noisy box probably reeks like delicious food all the time for the cat. Probably drove it nuts ;)
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadThis is normal for dogs. They're always "starving".
The majority of cats, however, have a built-in desire to eat whenever food is available, because they have not learned that it will continue to be available in the future. It's really hard to teach them this at any point after early kittenhood.
Also what is with everyone saying "he"? Seriously. That blog is pretty clear about who's writing it.
I would have put the machine in a base cabinet, run a chute out a small hole cut in the toe mould, and if necessary, put a child lock on the cabinet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustachian_tube
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostome : "In animals at least as complex as earthworms, the embryo forms a dent on one side, the blastopore, which deepens to become the archenteron, the first phase in the growth of the gut. In deuterostomes, the original dent becomes the anus while the gut eventually tunnels through to make another opening, which forms the mouth. The protostomes were so named because it used to be thought that in their embryos the dent formed the mouth while the anus was formed later, at the opening made by the other end of the gut."
I'd like to hack it and add timer functionality. See, my cat is always trying to get breakfast early and is always underfoot from 4 A.M. until I feed him. I tripped over him and broke my ankle last month because of this. I figure, if I can load up breakfast's meal before I go to bed, and only "unlock" the feeder after 7 A.M., my cat may eventually learn to stop bugging me at night. The joke will probably be on me though, darn cats.
I'd like to use an ESP8266 for this so I can also have an IoT feeder that reports usage statistics. =P
Did have a good idea for gamifying it though - a cat airlock with a camera, $5 a month, getting bored old ladies on Facebook to compare the cat in the airlock and making the decision to let it through or not...
https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20160115204055/http://www.q...
Not as much fun as an IoT cat feeder, though.
Just cut off the end of the adapter and wrap the wire around the battery terminals.
Seems short-sighted on the manufacturer's side. What happens if you go on vacation and the battery dies?
It should have a wall plug, and a battery to fallback on for when there's an outage.
Operant conditioning.
Watch out though for that extra-hard last ditch effort he will put out before giving up. Stay strong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(psychology)#Exti...
Cats are awesome, especially at finding our weaknesses...
He'll maybe learn to give up. Or he's like one of our cats where we have to install a baby gate on the outside of the closed door to our bedroom to make it difficult for him to bang on the door all night/morning so that we can sleep.
So he would surely wake us up if fed at 7:00am, so one solution is to feed at night. This results in a cat constantly underfoot begging for food for two hours, which is literally a tripping hazard.
The solution is to feed him from a machine and to make sure he never sees us touching the machine. Now, at feeding time he sits by the machine and stares at it, waiting for it to open.
My cat is almost 5 years old. She is the type to overeat to obesity, probably because she was abandoned at ~1yr by her previous owner. For half her life my partner and I have been feeding her like clockwork 3 times a day, minus all of 2-3 weeks of vacations where our roommate took over.
I have to exert a constant effort to maintain our bedroom door and the rubber that I lined on the jamb to prevent her from rattling the door at 5am to ask for food - the paint is a lost cause. We have a white noise machine. We ignore her cries for food. We ignore her pawing things off our desks. We have a system to keep track of food we give her so she can't "trick" the other person. She knows exactly when we feed her (the meows get cranked up a notch about an hour before food time) but despite not giving in, she keeps acting like meowing at us is going to go anywhere.
No luck. And we know we're not underfeeding her - she's getting the calories appropriate for her (currently normal) weight, is being fed wet food, has fresh water, lots of attention and toys, all that stuff.
Unfortunately we have to give this up because we've got a baby on the way, and it's just so frustrating to lose 2+ years of effort put into having her not weigh 18lbs...
Even though we kept a tight feeding schedule, our cats used to start meowing and pestering us an hour before dinner time. Now, they just sit quietly and stare at the automatic feeder until it dispenses their food.
All the kitty guides on webbernets say, "be firm and don't give into kitty's demands." Whereas I read on the ASPCA website, "buy an automated feeder."
Guess which worked? Happy automated cat feeder owner, and our cat mostly doesn't drive me insane around feeding times.
For reference, I also own this model of cat feeder and have not needed to harden, though I do have it wedged up next to a wall to lessen risk of tipping.
It was certainly this way with my cat. I really regret the months of different punishments we tried on him to discourage his bad behaviors as it changed his personality.
This seems to have worked so far to avoid the cat bothering us in the morning.
We turn it on when we close the door at night. The cats haven't figured out when it's on or off, but they have figured out if the door is open, they can run really fast past it and it won't get them.
It did stop the door scratching, but now the door scratching has turned to 5am serenades.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/PetSafe-KIT19001-SSScat/dp/B000RIA95G
He's a very big strong boy now (20ish pounds) and is just very happy.
My thinking was that he's a cat and what's the point of a cat being unhappy for his whole life.
We really had to push the weight loss because it was clear she wasn't meant to be so big. Her asthma was significantly worse when she weighed more (multiple attacks a week vs now I don't even remember the last one within the past year), and there were huge patches of her body covered in greasy dandruff because she couldn't groom herself. It would have eventually led to a lot of problems. Better for us to put up with her antics than to watch a painful death, really.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_anatomy#Skin
She is way too old to give a fuck anymore and there is nothing to indicate she will ever change at her age. Just like a human.
She is evil. If her dinner is felt to be sub par she goes into the sleeping child and claws the kid. She has come very close to a final vet visit with this behaviour.
Animals are complex machines, just as people are. They are mirroring a lot of our traits, as anger or ignorance.
As a final resort, give the cat up by letting someone adopt it. That actually works! Good luck!
So far these are the triggers:
1. I put a hall effect sensor and another C.H.I.P. on his exercise wheel (https://onefastcat.com/) so it feeds him every few revolutions he runs (not sure if he's associated the two yet)
2. Alexa skill.
3. Daily 5am feeding to avoid the early morning hungry-cat-alarm-clock.
4. Hacked Amazon Dash button next to the bed (and IFTTT button on my phone) in case the 5am feeding isn't enough to silence the hungry-cat-alarm-clock.
So yeah, I identify with this statement "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?"
I added the relay because I wanted more control. Normally you use a wall outlet relay or timer but then you only have one preset duration, and there's a 10 minute reset interval between feedings.
That might be easier to work into the system on a future refactoring of the system.
If you are paying for any AWS, it's free too.
Dry before work.
Wet when someone gets home. A little dry later. (Which they don't touch right away because they're satiated.)
Wet right before bed. They don't get ticked off unless you sleep in late because the late wet food is so good.
Cured the cat clawing at the door all night because we were trying to put them on a human food schedule for the wet stuff.
To curb this behavior, one of us would grab him off the shelf and literally throw him outside (onto grass, maybe 6' in the air), thinking that he would associate the unpleasantness of being thrown with his unwanted behavior.
He did. He changed his behavior such that he would jump up on said shelves and deliberately knock things off the shelf whenever he wanted to go outside.
He was a great cat other than that habit though. Hands down the most social (with humans) cat I have ever owned or met and my sample size on both counts is fairly large. He made everyone he met fall in love with him and had a territory of several square miles given the phone calls from people he encountered who took him in worrying that he wouldn't get home safely (he always did, though one incident when he was gone overnight prompted us to put the home phone number on his collar due to some concerned neighbor who took him in for the night). He also once jumped into a UPS truck that was delivering a package to my parents house - I happened to be looking out the window as the truck was leaving, watched it go halfway up the driveway, stop, and see the driver toss him out of the truck.
My parents have since stopped allowing their cats outside due to the murderous relationship between cats and local bird populations.
That line instantly made me recall this comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
now the human has responsibility because they started it when they brought the cat in.
though the cat doesn't seem to mind because hey free food and they get to act however the way they want and the human will think it's adorable.
it is so weird. even though as a human I also find cats often to be adorable. this is a reason I would never get one.
But the relationship between dogs and humans seems a lot less alien to me. I might one day, I could use the company. But it's a lot of responsibility.
Personally, I just put him with food and water in the garage (and a trapdoor to go outside), but then I live in the countryside.
If I forget, he wakes me up to go outside anyways...
Additionally, my obese cat was on a very controlled amount of "diet" food for years, it doesn't actually work. Switched him to Blue Buffalo and didn't observe any weight change.
And before anyone asks, yes, the cat has been to the vet and has gotten all the blood work and I've tried multiple meals and everything. Don't even go there.
Cats are true carnivores. They shouldn't be getting dry food to begin with.
I've always found it easier to trick cats rather than force them to do things. But to trick a cat you must think like one. :)
I'm terrified to think what the next step will be once Sprocket chooses to escalate.
Kudos to the cat for never giving up. My cat is clever and stubborn but this cat is downright devious.
I think we should be very happy that cats don't have opposable thumbs.
/me does not (any longer) own a cat.
Additionally, putting any expensive gadget up high above a hard surface is a recipe for disaster.
Machine parts and cat vomit (because the explosion will have dropped all the dry food through the room) not your style?
- What's the highest a cat can jump?
- [... no idea or wrong answer ...]
- How high do you store your food?
Vid of a cat jumping over 1m90 high:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw7CURpGRmw
The new PetSafe feeder is better: it will produce a little food when kicked, but it will only drop out a bit of the next meal from the top of the ramp; in contrast, the super feeder could drain its entire reservoir through continual knocking. I also find the PetSafe a better machine in other regards (battery operated, much larger reservoir, easier to program a serving by volume).
I do think the super feeder is more hackable though, so if you're looking to do metalwork maybe it's the better fit.
> Perhaps the kibble my cat eats is below the minimum supported size?
i do think it has some issues with sufficiently small kibble. i noticed a bit of increase in portion size variability when we moved to a smaller kibble.
did you have any luck with reducing the gate opening?
> I do think the super feeder is more hackable though
controlling it by applying power is certainly convenient. i've got an rpi which dispenses on a schedule, and lets us hit a web page to dump out some more food when the cats are complaining.
Ideally you would want to play with the cat before feeding her so she associates food with hunting not as a cure to boredom. Even if you are too busy to do that, the act of giving your cat food can be a bonding experience for a cat that's stuck indoors 24/7. Many cat health issues can be diagnosed by keeping an eye of food habit since cats famously hide their weakness (to not signal weakness to predators, i would imagine). Free feeding cats would hide their illness till its too late to do anything about it.
Same with litter even if you use 'litter robot' keep an eye on the poop when you change the litter, common kidney diseases can be instantly identified by glancing at poop.
Why bother having a pet at all if you're not going to personally care for it?
The writer clearly indicated this is just for one meal of the day. People are losing their shit here as if this cat is locked in a room for months on end with no human contact.
The author was giving two meals a day and often got home late in the evenings. Only the evening meal was from a machine. Don't act like the cat is being abused. The author looks like she is providing the cat with a very nice life.
"Whys?" It helps prevent tripping incidents when the cat knows its food time and is rubbing on your feet as you walk. It helps with anxiety associated with irregular feedings. That's just two reasons I thought of off the top of my head.
"An automated feeder would save me one chore per day, and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting home late in the evenings."
You seem to have ignored "save me one chore per day" which is what my original comment was in response too. Occasional late meal is not a big deal at all, you don't need to go about inventing ridiculous machines for that.
How do you, personally, anonymous Internet commenter, know how much stress this specific cat has when the evening meal is late?
You can give constructive comments about the benefits of manual feeding vs auto feeding without being rude and speaking in absolutes. There's certainly benefits of both options that differ with individual cats and circumstances.
def not my intention. Can you point out where i was rude so i can keep that in mind for future.
What I said of course is not true for special needs cats, do whats best for your cat if its special needs. I assumed we are talking about the 99% general case because original article didn't mention any special requirements that her cat had. I doubt anyone reading that blog would get the impression that her cat is special needs. Would you tell you someone "not speak in absolutes" to if she says "don't don't declaw your cat" ?
I know many cat owners who "play" with their cat by dangling a feather on its head, telling them to improve the play by creating intrigue and mystery during the play by hiding the source of noise is not an insult, I wouldn't think so. I made many pet owner mistakes myself. Unfortunately cats have the misguided 'easy maintenance' reputation which works against their well being.
Some people have automatic coffee makers that run on a timer. Does that make them indifferent to their own health?
This analogy is very far off from feeding your cat from a machine.
Feeding a cat is 1. giving it food 2. bonding and establishing a relationship 3. chance to check on cat's well being.
People can talk and tell someone if they are unwell.
In the old days we'd shovel coal into the furnace. We were in tune with nature.
Under "In Comments", third paragraph.
What we do is we feed them manually, once a day, the very same amount (using the same bowl as scoop) in the evening before we go to bed (he's on a diet for FLUTD, and she has to eat the same food so she's slightly obese). This gives us the advantage that the cats are not annoying during night, and if they eat too much they'll have to wait till the evening (which means we either get annoyed during day time, or we don't notice since we're not around). We also give them fresh water at the same time.
A major issue is when we're gone for more than a day. But a cat feed machine wouldn't be adequate. Cats need fresh water as well, and enough. Refilling when it is empty isn't enough. Algae are being formed. So this requires manual labour, daily.
Any ideas on how to detect a poop versus a piss? Perhaps there are urea sensors? The mass of the litter clump would be another good data point to measure, but I don't have any ideas about how to set it up with the Robot.
This hacker has the right idea:
https://twitter.com/litterboxtweets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
(As the owner of both a cat and parrot, I've learned not to underestimate their intelligence.)
I applaud the ingenuity, but fear she spent far more time and money "fixing" this one instead of doing a little amazon shopping.
I also hope that she unbolts that bowl to clean it every week.
The problem isn't that the cat is getting into the machine, the problem is that the human is neglecting to feed the cat.
Solve the right problem.
B) When traveling, one is not at home to feed the cat, at all. If fed, cats are quite content to have the house to themselves for a few days. If a cat is disciplined about eating, you can just put a lot of food in the bowl and leave it alone while you travel. If not, you need to build a machine to dispense food, or pay another human to come by and feed the cat.
C) I often enjoy reading stories about the process of engineering (iterated problems, solutions, new problems, etc.), even if the final result is 'over' engineered.
>even if the final result is 'over' engineered.
This is a major issue though. It's why a lot of engineers can't translate ideas and solutions into elegant businesses...
Of course there is nothing wrong with this project, so long as you understand it completely misses solving the actual problem at hand.
Seems to me the person undertaking this cat-feeder project is the one who gets to decide whether or not they have solved the "actual problem at hand", since they are the one who decided what the problem was in the first place.
Edit to add: despite my disagreement, I appreciate your concern for the cat. My dad's a veterinarian and my mom rescues feral cats, so I've seen a lot of malnourished and mistreated cats. It's heartbreaking how some people neglect the animals in their care. In this particular case, however, Sprocket looks very healthy.
HN is supposed to be a place for smart people.
//waiting for this to be flagged and silenced just for suggesting HN quality has declined
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] http://www.perfectpetfeeder.com/
I have two cats, male and female. They are from the same litter, and have had the same upbringing. One is quite chubby, the other stays fairly thin. The chubby one is also naturally lazier.
We just leave a bowl with kibble out for them during the day. Most of them self regulate. Two (out of six!) don't, and are a bit overweight.
His sibling on the other hand would eat quite a lot, but only if the food is fresh out of the bag, so ultimately she doesn't eat that much throughout the day.
And the cat is not even superintelligent.
If, instead, the cat were trying to turn everything into paperclips it might be harder to combat its efforts because you'd never figure out what it was trying to do beyond causing chaos.
The laundry basket is the tall type, with a hole cut in the bottom and a funnel installed, plus a chute screwed on for good measure. It's mounted on the wall, raised about 1ft, so they can't get their grubby little paws in there.
The creativity and versatility of even a "simple" biological intelligence is a humbling reminder of how much work we have ahead for AI research.
There's a weird contraption that feeds you twice a day. And you can see food still up there, on the conveyor belt.
How would you like to spend the next 7 hours?
My wife and I personally think it's borderline inhumane to keep a dog by itself all day, since they are extremely social.
While we usually don't keep solitary cats, I don't think it's that uncomfortable for cats to be alone, though per your DM interpretation, they will commonly get into things. Which they will do in groups too.
The amount of desired human attention sought from cats in our household has has decreased as the number of cats in the has increased. That's not to say they don't still want our attention, or that we don't give it to them. Having friends to keep busy seems to make the days go by easier.
When the boy went to be neutered, the girl spent the whole day going from room to room meowing and looking in his usual spots.
When she went to be fixed, he did the same.
I'll probably never have a single cat again (some of that is that they are used to each others presence I'm sure) since they are excellent company for each other.
Or smell it. Consider that cats have better smell than us, and that cat food is designed to smell especially good and addicting to cats. Then that noisy box probably reeks like delicious food all the time for the cat. Probably drove it nuts ;)
Here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMtn25zxT10