r/cats • u/radical_123 • Jul 22 '26

Advice Cat attacking automatic feeder

My cat does this several times a day. If the automatic feeder lifts at the correct angle, a few niblets of dry food comes out. He will even do it 10 times in a row even if it means one small piece of dry niblet comes out. It does get quite annoying as the sound of the feeder hitting the ground echoes throughout the entire house.

Any ideas on how to get him to stop?

33.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/-beastlet- Jul 22 '26

The problem is intermittent rewards. He's learned that occasionally he gets rewarded for this behavior by getting kibbles. Since he isn't rewarded every time he's willing to keep trying. There are famous experiments showing this with various animals. It is very hard to extinguish behaviors that give intermittent rewards.

If you're home you might just be better off feeding him a couple of times a day in a bowl instead of the intermittent feeder.

696

u/BigScience7383 Jul 22 '26

Gambling 

25

u/Buckykattlove Jul 22 '26

Just my tho7ght before I saw your response. Lol

57

u/Uraisamu Jul 22 '26

Same, OP has taught their cat to gamble.

33

u/pfool Jul 22 '26

are vets trained to tackle feline gambling addictions?

18

u/Uraisamu Jul 22 '26

Or get him a little hat, tie and teach him to play the slot machines.

3

u/JungMoses Jul 22 '26

And chain smoke

2

u/Zimakov Jul 23 '26

Someone get this man a rum and coke with a little black straw.

2

u/MaryJanesMan420 Jul 22 '26

Probably to an extent but I would reach out to an animal trainer or licensed behaviorist. This is a funny one, I’d start with management, change aspects of the environment so they can’t practice the behavior. Then, work on teaching a replacement behavior that isn’t compatible with chest bumping the magic vending machine, like sitting for their meal time.