We have one petite, mature kitty who has always grazed throughout the day. With the addition of our younger, more virile dummy (who requires measured feedings only twice a day, and who also cannot have our mature gentleman’s wet food) we were struggling with allowing our older guy to get enough food, picking up his food dish all the time, having to supervise feeding time, etc. It was miserable. This thing changed our lives. It worked perfectly as soon as we got it. Stupid easy to set up and program. We didn’t have to train the older kitty at all, just him sniffing the dish was enough for the lid to open. We’ve had it about a year now and the younger guy still hasn’t figured out how to get into it (though he really is quite dumb, bless him). I work at a vet clinic and I recommend this to people all the time, especially for those who have to buy expensive prescription/specialty foods that not everyone in the house can eat. Cleaning is easy. The only thing is that the lid is a bit slow to open and close, so some kitties may be able to sneak if they’re quick enough I imagine. But again, mine hasn’t quite gotten there.

These are everything they promise. We have a cat who likes the kitten food and a kitten who likes the cat food, as well as two dogs who will eat any food any time, and two of these solved that immediately. Both cats took to them with no fuss; I did not have to go through the training steps to get them used to the movement. The kitten was a bit spooked the first time it opened but came right back; the cat had her head in the bowl before I’d even put treats in it, and they’ve both been eating happily since. The bowls have gaskets that seal nicely to the cover when it’s closed, so I feel ok about putting a day’s worth of dry food in there and letting them graze as they wish. It would probably do OK with wet food, but my cats won’t eat it because they’re little weirdos whose only mission is chaos and anarchy. So far, the dogs haven’t been able to figure out a way around the new defenses. They look nice, don’t take up too much space, and work as advertised. They’re easy to set up, and depending on the willingness of the cat, pretty zero effort to switch to. Only things I don’t love are the price (It’s a lot for what it is) and that they’re battery power only (I’d prefer a plug plus battery backup), which admittedly does make them work everywhere and look very clean, but I can’t yet comment on the battery life. They include a second, divided bowl, a silicone mat for the ramp at the front, and an RFID collar tag in case your cat isn’t microchipped. Mine are, but it’s worth mentioning that the tag is quite small and light compared to the tags sold with other feeders; I wouldn’t feel too badly about putting this one on my cat’s collars if needed. Everything is attractive, well made, and easy to operate and clean.

Not cheap, but so worth it. Have a kitten that likes the big cats food. And the big cat likes the kitten food (and was starting to get super fat because of it). Feeding time was the biggest hassle, I can’t believe I waited so long to look for something like this. Super easy setup, worked on first try. Cats took to it immediately. One of the best purchases I’ve made in years.

We have bought two of these. They have worked very well. However, one of the machines stopped working after about 1 year. There is a 3-year warranty and I am going through the process of getting a replacement. The other machine has no problems. Our cats took to them pretty quickly. We did use the training options for a couple weeks, which gradually gets the cats used to the feeder. They are perfect for keeping our young cats from eating our elderly cat’s special food. They have a nice design. They are not an eye soar. Easily cleanable and transportable. I would give them 5 stars if it were not for the one machine not working after a year. I am appreciative of the warranty and wish there were more size options for the tray. I also wish they were less expensive as the microchip readers are not super high tech any longer…

I don't usually write reviews, but this feeder has been a life saver! I have an older cat on a prescription diet and a 9-month-old kitten who will eat anything that remotely looks like food and was really struggling with how to keep my kitten out of the the prescription food when I am not right there to monitor the bowls and let the older cat eat when he wants to. He is a grazer who will not eat more than a few bites at a time, and I just can't follow him around all day with a little bowl of food. I also travel quite a bit, so this little gem will allow my cat sitter to easily manage feeding both cats. This feeder is exactly what I needed! It took my boy a few days to be comfortable with sticking his head through the hoop and into the bowl, but he is getting the hang of it and his food intake is much better than it was when I had to offer him food when I saw him and put it away immediately to keep the kitten out of it. The kitten has thoroughly investigated the feeder too, but cannot open the lid, and since the bowls have a little silicone lip, the lid forms a reasonably tight seal, so he can't smell the food inside and loses interest quickly. The set up was fast and easy and the feeder "read" his 15-year-old chip in about 2 seconds once he was willing to put his head far enough into the feeder for the sensor to pick it up. The lid mechanism is virtually silent too, which is a plus. I've only had the unit for 4 days, so I can't speak to the long-term durability, but it seems well made. My only real complaints are the price (excessive for a pet feeder) and the fact that there is no option to plug it in and doesn't come with a rechargeable battery pack, which should be a standard option in 2023, especially for what this feeder costs.

Okay, so I have seen this thing before and I finally decided to buy it in May 2016 (this year) for my oldest cat so my fat cat doesn't eat her food. I have tried everything to get him to drop weight but aside from separating them (headache) and they refuse to do so or sitting with them (which my momma/oldest cat doesn't eat in on sitting) it just hasn't worked. So, I invested. Thing is, at first she would eat from it. She didn't seem bothered but within the first day she just decided she wouldn't eat from it. I cant get her to do so. I even tried to warm her up to it but no, the fatty would just jump up there and eat her food. I finally gave up. (she's a b and super moody/stubborn). This was a bummer cause I had to buy a specific leather collar for her because she has allergy issues and a regular collar is a no go because she will scratch at it so much it frays and she nearly chokes herself with the collar. I decided to make the fatty use it. It's been going well. He doesn't mind it. I have to keep my oldest cats food up on the spare mattress in the room (I hate it but she has made that place her home so far) and I haven't seen him jump up there. So, I've specifically measured the food and he seems to be doing well. So, it works for him. I think maybe if I get another for her it'd be best cause she wont be able to refuse but who knows. Now I have a new kitten whom loves the fat cat (who is only sociable with me and actually chases the dog away for attention) which is entertaining to say the least. Problem is, she sneaks up on him and goes under to get his food. Poor thing nearly died outside when my fiancé found her. It's a whole story of family dying maybe of starvation or heat exhaustion but she lived and is super healthy, not scared of a huge truck, forklift, even the fat cat or dog. She does fear my momma cat as she hisses at her like a meanie. I will also say that she's fast to get in to take his food if he's eating which displeases him but she's such a lover. However, when it's closed she will dance all over top of it and cant eat it. This pleases my fat cat much. To watch her try but not get his food. Good entertainment. Overall, I'd love to get two more of these eventually but right now it's just steep. I'm disappointed that my momma didn't take to it but it's doing its job. I'm not sure why someone would have 30 something cats (yes, you can program that many) or why you would need this feeder to program that many cats to eat from one small bowl. It doesn't make sense. You cant put food for 30 something cats in the feeder and at that point you don't even need this thing and it's probably much more fancier than that person would need with that many cats. Seems like a waste and pointless but sure is funny to think about. Whatever. I do know that the timer can be changed to close sooner so the kitten doesn't get to it as quickly but the way she sneaks in I doubt itll help. Overall, it's a great product! Truly. I wish I would have gotten it cheaper of course. I gave it a 4 star because my momma cat just hated it and I even did what it said for shy cats but they need to have a mood cat adjustment section in the instructions. Not that it is the companies fault but it's so expensive it's truly ridiculous. But I digress, I still think I'd buy more for my other pets. I have already talked about it. Just wishing I could get a discount for getting two or something. UPDATE July 16, 2016: so, I thought it odd before that the lid opens without my cats collar but thought it was just due to my smart watch or something. However, I didn't worry about it since my fat cat is the only one who eats from it (waste of money since its my mama cats food that needs to be protected from HIM) but I made it work. I was having no issues with the new kitty except trying to train her it's not her bowl which was fine. She would play on it and not get any food but I've noticed that if you walk in the feeder or put your hand in it enough it'll open for you without the chip or pressing the button. Sometimes it does it just in one try. Pisses me off cause my dog now has started attempting to eat their food unlike before and if I'm not home he other half doesn't know what he did. Anyway, I'm not happy with this. I reset the feeder. Reprogrammed the chip reader and changed everything. I'm pissed at this point cause $150 is not cheap for a bowl that doesn't do what it says it will. I liked this a lot but now I'm extremely unhappy about it because it's not just about my fat cat not eating other cats food. It's so much more. I've dropped the stars to one now. Attempting to log onto the website for help is a joke too. You sign in and it keeps saying your signed in but takes you back to the page you were on and low and behold you aren't signed in and can't make a comment or ask a question. The only solution for another person with this problem was to reset or call them. I don't even know what kind of number that is so that's not a possibility. The other solution didn't work.

This chip feeder has been a lifesaver! My cat that’s on a diet can’t get into it and my cat that uses the chip feeder doesn’t have to eat so fast now! Easy set up too. This is my third chip feeder!

I had been hesitant for so long about getting this feeder because it’s so expensive. But I have one cat that is quite peckish with his food and another cat that eats everything - including the food his brother leaves behind. So I have one skinny cat and one chubby cat and despite my every effort, I can’t keep the chubby one away from his brother’s bowl, so I can’t monitor how much each cat is eating. Well I finally bit the bullet and invested in 2 of these feeders, one for each cat. What a game changer!! First of all, they’re incredibly easy to set up. I thought I’d have to manually program them for each cat, but it’s so much simpler than that. Simply put treats in the feeder and allow each cat to come up and eat them, and the feeder records their chips automatically. Now I’m finally able to control each of their diets separately, and they can eat according to their independent eating habits. This is especially important now that my job requires me to work in the office, so I can feel confident that Mr. ChubbyCat won’t get into his brother’s food while I’m gone all day. I couldn't recommend these feeders more. They’re worth the investment!

I have three cats. Cat 1 has to be on a special Rx food, Cat 2 is a ravenous monster, and Cat 3 has health concerns & needs his food intake monitored to ensure he is eating. I have two of these feeders, one for Cat 1 & one for Cat 3. Without these feeders, I would never be able to keep my cats healthy! The feeder itself is very easy to set up. It does require 4 C batteries to work, but I have had the feeder for Cat 1 for over a year & I have only needed to change the batteries once. To get it linked to the cat's chip, all I had to do was press the button on the back for the feeder to be ready to read the chip, then put my cat's head under the white arch, where the sensors are located. That was it! Easy peasy! With Cat 3, he is not the kind to let me pick him up to put his head under the arch, so I just pushed the learning button on the back, put some treats on the closed lid, & waited for him to put his head under to eat them. Then it was linked to him. Some things I really really like about the feeder are: 1. The training mode. This was great for Cat 3. (Cat 1 didn't need it at all, he caught on super quick that putting his head under the arch opened the lid & he got to eat). Cat 3 is really easy to startle and fairly anxious, so the training mode, where the lid doesn't open/close all the way, was great for him to get him used to the sound & movement of the lid. He was able to get the hang of it in about 2 weeks. 2. The ability to change the speed of the opening and closing. This was a nice feature for Cat 3, since he likes to take his individual bits of kibble out of the bowl, set them on the ground, and eat them one at a time. This pulls him out from under the arch. I put his on the 3 second delay before it will close the lid, and this delay means he can pull out his kibble, eat it, and go back for more before the lid closes up again. Since he is so nervous, if it closed up right away, he probably would get freaked out and confused and not go back for more. Cat 1 scarfs all his down right away, so I have his set at 1 second delay before closing up. This is a nice feature so you can adjust to your cat's needs. 3. The intruder cat feature is excellent! As I said, Cat 3 needs the 3 second delay. So when he is done eating for the time being (he is a grazer) and walks away, it will stay open for 3 seconds. Cat 2 (the only cat who uses a regular dish bc he doesn't have health concerns) eats everything all the time, so he will try to sneak in to eat the food in the other cats' bowls. Cat 1 feeder is set to close after 1 second so it's usually too fast for Cat 2 to get there, but Cat 3 feeder stays open for longer. So Cat 2 tries to go to that to eat the food. But once he sticks his head through the arch, it reads his microchip as an intruder cat & will immediately close, even if it hasn't gotten to 3 seconds yet. This is important for my cats, because I have to monitor Cat 3's food intake and it's great that the feeder will not let any of the other two cats eat from his feeder once it reads their chips. 4. The bowls are dishwasher safe. The dual bowl is good for Cat 3 who gets both soft food and kibble. 5. The lid movement is not loud at all. 6. The battery drain is minimal so you won't have to be buying C batteries all the time. Things I wish were improved in the feeder are: 1. The sensor only works if your cat puts his head under it, both for authorized and intruder cat's. Which means sometimes, Cat 2 will be able to come at the food by putting his head behind the arch & snatching up food without the sensor reading him as an intruder cat. I believe they sell a hood piece on the company website, but given the price of the feeder to begin with, it feels like the hood piece should just be free/come standard. The point of this item is to keep other animals from accessing the food, so this oversight defeats the purpose of the feeder. However, since the lid will still close after 1,2, or 3 seconds depending on your settings, this negative isn't a major deterrent for me, since I bought a second one when Cat 3 got sick & I had to start monitoring his food intake. 2. I wish there was an option to pick different colors for the bowls when you buy the feeder itself, instead of it coming standard with gray. It would make it easier for those of us who have more than one feeder to designate which feeder went with which cat. I can remember easily enough, but I travel a lot and hire a pet sitter to come feed my cats, and I have to specify "Cat 1 feeder is on the table, Cat 3 is on the floor" or whatever each time. It would be nice if I could have selected a different colored bowl when I purchased my second feeder. There is an option to buy different colors separately but again, these aren't exactly cheap feeders & I don't want to have to buy additional stuff if I don't have to. But again, not a big enough issue to deter me. If you have more than one pet, need to have some pets eating different foods than others, have a pet who eats all the food before the others can get any, etc. then I can't recommend this enough. It's not cheap, but it has been a necessity for me to keep my cats who have health problems healthy!

2 year update: we've had to replace 2 of these due to them breaking down (maybe from the savannah constantly messing with them and the other cats puking on the feeders which then gets to the motor), and contact surefeed customer service to get new lids because the savannah managed to break them. Their customer service was excellent though. We have a new setup that should finally stop the stealing. we used an ikea kallax with doors, cut cat sized holes in the doors and put child locks on. Unfortunately it's hard to find this version of the feeder anymore and we had to get the newer model (which could be cool but not necessary for us and more expensive). But still no other product on the market that we have found to do what this one does, so I'd still recommend it. Updated pics with new setup. 3 month update: we've had to change the batteries on a few of the feeders already but no big deal. One of the cats tends to vomit sometimes which on occasion has gotten inside the device, which required full on dismantling and cleaning, but it still works. We've had to modify the shelf a few times because the savannah can still steal their food. We're still working on that but it has improved. We have to make it so only one cat can fit on the shelf, but the feeder is so wide it's hard to do that. Adding updated picture. ---‐------------ Some background: we have 4 large (~15lb) male cats, one of them is a savannah. The savannah along with one of the others both have urinary issues, but the others do not. We decided to try switching them all to all wet food as it should help alleviate the urinary problems, but this caused some major hassles at feeding time. The savannah had his own "feeding tote" (clear plastic storage container big enough for him to stand in we drilled holes in the lid), because he is super greedy, and just a plain jerk to the other cats and steals all their food. Feeding would take 20-30 minutes since one cat in particular is a slow eater, and we were feeding them 3x a day. Both my partner and I work full time and needed a solution to reduce the amount of time feeding and the hassles involved. So i did some searching and found that this feeder is the only product out there that at least claims to do what we need it to do, which is keep mainly the jerk cat out of everyone else's food (he's gotten pretty fat), but we needed something that works with wet food. Pros: - super easy programming and use - only opens for the programmed cat - seals the food and keeps it fresh longer - cats can graze all day - battery powered, easy portability It's not great, definitely could use some improvements but so far it's working. Cons: - No option to plug in, only takes C batteries - too shallow, it gets really messy and requires cleaning with every change of the bowl, at least for wet food (one of my cats is an especially messy eater but the others don't make as big of a mess. Still needs cleaning often) - non dishwasher safe bowls included, and theyre plastic. If i can't run it through the dishwasher it's too much work, but we bought extra stainless bowls which are dishwasher safe. - extras/accessories are expensive. Really, almost 40 dollars for two stainless bowls, 30 for a pretty much required back cover, it's ridiculous. Those things should be included. - no ice packs or space for them to keep wet food fresher longer, but the seal still helps - if your cat is extremely clever and determined (like our savannah), you will need to get creative and find ways to keep them out. The back cover wasn't enough, he would just push himself in next to the other cat while they're eating and start eating their food. When this happens, the feeder will not close, so it's pretty useless without some extra effort. Another thing to note, we purchased only one feeder at first to test the waters. The cat we used it for got scared of it, so I did use the training mode on it. It worked like a charm and now he has no problems. He doesn't understand now that there are more of them that only one opens for him. They all still sit in front of the wrong feeders and wonder why they won't open, but they're slowly starting to get it. For some reason they never want to eat out of their own bowl but want to take the others'. We made a custom shelf set up for our situation, which cost about 100 dollars in materials but we couldn't find anything more affordable that would suit our needs. (We also have 2 dogs who are ravenous for the cat food. One of them could literally climb to the top of a 6 foot cat tree to steal their uneaten food, another reason we needed something like this feeder). The important thing is to keep another cat from getting to the food before the lid can close. Once the lid closes it won't open for the wrong cat, but there is plenty of room for 2 cats to stick their head in at the same time and keep the lid from closing on them. Anyway, photos included of our custom solution..first photo is comparing/showing how messy one of the cats is compared to the not so messy eaters. we've only had these for a few weeks but so far it seems to be working. You can see the savannah is still trying to get to the other cat's food (even though he has his own full bowl and the food is exactly the same. Jerk.) But so far this has kept him from being able to get his head in fast enough. We also put the closing speed on the faster setting, that helps.