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What a journey! My vet recommended more puzzle feeders and moving to get rid of the free dry food (I do wet food in morning/night), both to control how much the cat eats and to give them something to do. After all, in the wild food is not free, they have to hunt for it.

One they recommended was something like [0] which is what I've been using. Works pretty well in that most of the time the cat knows he can't get food from me (though smart enough to know I fill them up and hide them). Adds a little game and great if you'll be out of the house for a while. So there's no longer a bowl for dry food at all, he has to "hunt" for his mice. Though I'm guilty of sometimes giving some bonus food, I think it is a helpful system. I think he'd be all over an autofeeder just like in this story (already have to hide the big dry food bag as he'll get into it).

[0] https://docandphoebe.com/

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The problem with this approach is that you'll have spilled bits of cat food all around the house.

Yep, had this problem with one of those "ball feeders". My solution was to put it in bathtub.

We have a ball feeder, but this ends up not being a problem; he eats every scrap of the food that comes out, even if there are smaller crumbs. I guess it helps that we feed him on a wood floor, not carpet, too.

I feed on a wood floor and I have a Roomba. Great combo.

True, there can be a few bits here and there. Used to have some food left around but now he seems better at getting all of it. And I try not to fill them up too much anyway. The ones I linked have an adjustable opening, so I use the smallest setting, lets less food out at once which helps in this area too.

Something to be careful of is where you put it. For a while I would put them on the rugs, or hidden near rugs, and he would eat on the rug. I think this led to ingesting too much crap (fibers, hairs, whatever) which led to some, uh, clingers, shall we say. Since moving exclusively to hardwood floor areas, it has gone away.

I’m so grateful for our two - we just leave out big bowls of dry food, they eat a bit here and there, never excessively, and both are lean and happy. I figured it was because they were secure that there would always be more food - and it seems to be the case, as I recommended to a friend who was new to cats that they do the same, and their guys behave likewise.

We have four cats and 2 of them require special food (kidney and allergies), and of the other two one of them will eat any food he can find most of the time while the other wanted to be in control of her own food to the point where she would do the thing where she scratched at the side of the bowl trying to bury it, presumably to keep it from the other one.

So just leaving some bowls out didn't really work for them, they'd constantly eat each others' food or eat everything as quick as possible to keep it from the other cats, with predictable (and gross) results.

We got feeder bowls that only open with the right RFID and now they're all much happier and more food secure. Sadly there's no good ones on the market I could find that do both automatic feeding and the rfid-gating, so we still have to manually feed them but for the most part they don't care when we feed them anymore except sometimes in the morning (which is the most likely time for them to run out of food).

Seems like a cool DIY project if you get the time to do it!

> I figured it was because they were secure that there would always be more food

I’ve lived with quite a few different cats in my day. It’s simply the individual cat. Some cats overeat if allowed, some don’t. It’s certainly nice when you have one that doesn’t, but it’s nothing you did if you have one that does.

We have a cat that was briefly feral, and she will gorge anything she can get to. While we were visiting my family for the holidays, our cat sitter friend called us and let us know that she had left the bin full of dry food on the counter, and the cat climbed up, pushed it off the counter bursting it open, and gorged on a ton of food, so much that she thought the cat was having trouble breathing. She was OK though, I think at some point she vomited up some of it.

We definitely can't leave any extra food out with this one around, likewise she will try to get to people food if human backs are turned. She's calmed down a bit though, it no longer seems that she's constantly plotting how to get extra food.

I should say my cat doesn't really overeat, I don't think. He won't eat everything just because it is out, but did gain a little weight. I think partially from me being home all the time in the pandemic; he seems to eat more when I'm around. In the past he wouldn't eat everything in his bowl, and maybe still wouldn't but I haven't done full free feeding.

But even without worrying about eating too much, my cat definitely craves novelty and plays a lot. So I think the vet was recommending it for both reasons. He was getting too attached to going outside a lot, which I also had to curb (perhaps related).

The majority of your cats’ diet should be wet food, or else you risk kidney problems.

I've raised 15 cats in my life and own 7 now. It's almost purely genetic. Right now I have 6 trim cats and one fat cat and I feed them all the same way. I've had one other fat cat that passed away, same story.

> both to control how much the cat eats

Get one Surefeed per cat and that's not a problem any more - side benefit, you'll see when one cat suddenly eats less which may be an indicator for toothache... which can escalate into full-blown hepatolipidosis like it did with one of my old cats.

Invest 300€, save 3500€ in veterinary ICU costs down the road.

I wish I could feed mine wet - but one of them requires specialized dry food (Ultramino) that doesn't come in wet :(

Won't the cats swarm over you while you're filling the hunting feeder or dispersing them through the house?

I suppose that could happen. One idea is that you just hide them at one time, so even if they see one they won't see the rest if they get distracted eating the other. Over time they'll learn food is around for them to find.

One trick I do is to fill and hide the mice when he's eating his wet food. Nothing will distract him from that! But he's also learned that I do fill them, but won't just give it to him. He might try a quick snack when I'm filling one up but otherwise knows he'll get them somewhere else later.

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