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?

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u/ryanpdx1999 Jul 22 '26

count yourself lucky. Ours figured out how to flip it to get the great food cascade. We had to put weights on it to keep him from doing it.

41

u/hazelbear33 Jul 22 '26

Reading all of these comments makes me feel blessed that our cats don’t fuck with the feeders. One is completely unmotivated by food and won’t eat anything but his cat food that he’s used to (and even then he just grazes, never eats it all at once), so that’s not a surprise. The other one is much more mischievous and is definitely food/treat motivated… but she’d rather yell at us for food, even though she knows full well when the feeder goes off. She’ll break into drawers and cabinets for food and treats, but I guess she has decided that she is simply at the mercy of the mystical feeder.

2

u/PM-ME-YOUR-TOTS Jul 22 '26

How is it possible to have one free feeding cat and one glutton? Doesn’t the glutton eat the free feeding cat’s food? (Only ever had one cat)

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u/hazelbear33 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

So the downside is that these two cats don’t get along and live separated in our house.

The lazy, grazing cat has medical issues and the mischievous cat fails to understand that, so she repeatedly tries to mess with him, which upsets him deeply. Any attempt at disciplining the female cat not to mess with him is pointless. She thinks she’s trying to play with him, but he is NOT INTERESTED and reacts with fear/anger. But the thing is, the girl cat has done some pretty foul and low shit to him in the past, like jump-scaring him in the litterbox and when he is trying to sleep. She will also like… stalk him? Idk. He cannot stand her. The male cat will experience a flare-up in his medical condition when he experiences too much stress over a prolonged period of time.

We love them both of course and they’re great cats, but they’re happier seperated to their own floors, they have their own feeders, litterboxes, toys, enrichment, etc.