Types Concerning Automatic Feeder
24 Hour
These allow you to fill sections and set the meal times for a day-long period, which is good if your cat needs smaller portions more regularly for health reasons but you’ll be there to top it up after this time
Daily
They can either feed once per day for around 4-6 days or twice for 2-3 days. Better for if you’re going for a weekend away and want to plan ahead. Will usually have larger sections so the cat can eat as much as they want when they want
Dispensing
Often quite flexible when it comes to times and durations. They allow you to fill up a container with a lot of dry food, which is then dispensed at certain times of the day. Great if you want to regulate the times your cat feeds but not have to manually fill up a section every few days
Capacity
This depends on the style. If you will be filling up a few sections at once for a shorter time period, each can usually hold around 200-300g of food, which will be the perfect one portion size for most cats.
If choosing a dispenser size, many can hold up to 3kg, which should be able to feed your cat around 10 meals before needing to be replaced. Think about ideally how long you will be using the dish for without filling it up and don’t buy one which is too large, as fresh food is always the best option.
Food Type
Depending on the style, you can use either wet food, dry food or both with cat food dispensers.
Ones which dispense a certain amount of food into a dish at any one time will need to use dry food, but ones with which you plan ahead for the portions can often use wet food.
If you are using wet food, ensure there is an ice pack in the base or some other way of keeping it fresh for the time period. If it isn’t, bacteria and mould could start to form which means it will be unsafe when they come to eat it.