REVIEWED: PetSafe 5-Meal Automatic Pet Feeder
A life-saver for short trips away, this easy to use pet feeder is light on batteries
No-one likes leaving a cat for days on end, but for the occasional overnight (or two) trip, contacting neighbours and findings a cat-sitter can be a pain.
Easy to use
The PetSafe 5-Meal Automatic Pet Feeder has five compartments good for one meal each, though it’s best to fill them with biscuits/kibble rather than meat, especially for anything other than for the first meal. It’s also dishwasher proof, which is nice (dry pet food is not an easy thing to shift).
Five meals … or is that four?
The electronic timer is easy to use, with the tray spinning round to reveal an empty tray whenever you want – typically twice per day – though there is one really important fact here about the design. Because the opened area of the lid reveals a meal when it spins round, this feeder actually only supplies four meals since the first one is already revealed. If you’ve a naturally hungry cat/rabbit/small dog that feeds as soon as food is available, that’s not much use.
Battery-buster
In our six-month text, we had to change the four D-cell batteries once, and that was only due to us leaving the thing switched-on for weeks when it wasn’t even being used. Since it’s expensive to replace these kind of batteries, it’s wise to remember to extract them and put them separately into the five-way feeder itself when it’s being stored. Otherwise the tray spins around twice a day, which equals one confused cat!
Peace of mind
Easy to use and adding peace of mind while on short trips, so reliable is the PetSafe 5-Meal Automatic Pet Feeder that it’s highly tempting to put it on every morning … and that’s the sign of a truly great travel gadget.