Arf Pets Automatic Pet Feeder Food Dispenser for Dogs, Cats & Small Animals – Features Distribution Alarms, Portion Control & Voice Recording – Timer Programmable Up to 4 Meals a Day

Update: 2 years later we still love this feeder! Unfortunately our extremely food-motivated boy has figured out a few tricks and we're on the hunt for a new one. First off, I do need to say that this feeder help us meet his goal and slim him down. He can now properly groom himself!Now, about this feeder. Our boy tried every which way to get food between meals. He sat on top of it and tried to claw it open. The claw marks in the plastic are kind of hilarious. He figured out that if he scoots it around and bumps it hard enough it will knock a few extra pieces of food out.He also tried knocking it over, but it's built well enough that it didn't break open and would just scatter a few pieces of food from the dispenser.We moved and thought we found a corner secure enough for the feeder so that he wouldn't be able to bump it around. It didn't work. He was quickly back to his old ways, all hours of the day and night.The grand finale came when he figured out that he can stick a claw under the dish to lift the feeder up a few inches, then let it go to slam it down and dispense another treat, all hours of the day and night. We even tried removing the bowl but he went back to knocking it over, all hours of the day and night.I'll let you know if we find another feeder...Original review: So far, I love this feeder and I'm excited for how much it's going to help my Reaper boy be better! More on that later. Set-up was a breeze, but the difficulty came in verifying how much food was being dispensed per portion. It was quite a game to dispense, measure, and re-dispense food to find the right amount. The guide provided by the manufacturer is okay to use, but if your beloved pet is on a specific diet or overweight, I highly recommend that you do what I did to make sure they're eating the proper amount of food. Our Reaper loves to snack...on the other cat's food throughout the day. She's a grazer and he's a gobbler.Firstly, we used our trusty gram scale to measure out how much Reaper normally gets per day.https://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-Multifunction-Stainless-Batteries-Included/dp/B0113UZJE2/This dispenser measures by volume. Each food will have a different size, shape, and density. This will make it take up more or less room per portion, meaning it will dispense more or less weight (grams) for different foods. Our food is in particularly small pellets (Nulo) which means the dispenser ends up dispensing about 14 grams per portion, as opposed to the 10 grams suggested on the manufacturer's guide. That doesn't seem like much, but let me put it into perspective. If I hadn't measured myself, Reaper could be getting up to 40% more food per day. Normally, he would get about 3/4 cup, which measures out to about 100 grams per our gram scale. If I had simply set the dispenser to 10 portions, he would actually get more like 140 grams. That's too much food. Too many calories for an already chunky house cat. So, we set it to be 7 portions, which is about 98 grams of food. This has turned out to be nearly perfect. For his 12-hour eating period, meal 1 is 2 portions, meal 2 is 1 portion, meal 3 is 1 portion, and meal 4 is 3 portions. A big dinner keeps him happy all night, until his first meal the next morning. Snacks throughout the day keep him from eating the other cats food (kind of).The battery back-up is amazing and will save us a lot of heartache here in Florida. However, in an effort to not be wasteful, we've decided to get adapters to turn the D battery slots into AA battery slots. We have lots of rechargeable AA and AAA in our house, so we picked up these adapters to prevent ourselves from also having random D batteries floating around: https://www.amazon.com/Whizzotech-Parallel-Battery-Adapters-Converter/dp/B074PKPPNS/

4 YER UPDATE: I was looking back through my reviews and figured I would update my review on this specific product. I’ve owned the exact unit I originally purchased for about 4 years now and I still LOVE it. I now have 2 cats, and love that I could easily update the portion sizes. I’ve moved 3 times since I originally purchased, and this baby has held up through being tossed and shuffled hundreds of miles.Pros:-the machine remembers your programmed dispense times and portions even if unplugged, meaning power outages and relocations aren’t the end of the world-super secure, the lock still works great 4 years later so my chubby kitties cannot break in-easy to fill and holds a LOT of food. even with 2 cats eating, I only have to refill it every 2-3 weeksCons:-like an alarm clock, it does lose the time when the power goes out or it gets unplugged… while rare, this is annoying if I don’t notice right away and fix the time BUT its very easy to set again-my orange kitty has learned that if he rams his body into it, it will release about 3 pieces of food. it’s otherwise secure and he usually gives up after 3 hits anyways, and it doesnt seem to have damaged the machine at all over the years.All that being said, HIGHLY recommend this product. If mine ever decides to kick the bucket, I’ll only buy this brand ever again!Original:I shopped around for an automatic food dispenser for a while before settling on this one and I am so glad that I did. It is middle range for price and definitely worth it. I bought it for my cat because my work schedule has me getting home at strange hours sometimes and he was not being fed on a consistent schedule. With this you can schedule 4 different feeding times and each one you can schedule a different portion size. It does have a voice recording feature but I never used it because my cat gets so excited at the sound of food coming out he doesn't even care about my voice. It hold an entire 3.5 pound bag of cat food which is very convenient because I don't have to have a partially open bag of food lying around. I would by this 100x over again. I swear this is the best thing I have ever purchased! He has been more pleasant being on a better eating schedule and no longer gobbles at his food when it comes out. He has also lost some weight and is at a healthier size which the vet is pleased about, because I can now control his portion sized throughout the day. I would recommend this to any pet owner!