How Long Can You Leave Your Cat With an Automatic Feeder?
A day? Two days? Five days?
The holiday season has long come and gone. But I still can’t help but think how much easier things would have been if I could have just left my cat at home on her own for a few days. While I was away in December, could she have just chilled on her own if she had an automatic feeder? TK WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE CAT INSTEAD
I know a lot of people do it, but it has always seemed wrong to me. For years I didn’t even have a cat because work kept me out of the house so much, and I didn’t want to get a pet just to leave them alone. People think cats are aloof and distant, happy to spend their days in isolation, staring at a sunbeam, but they’re wrong. Cats are social creatures. They are bonded to us. And even the ones who don’t like to be touched still like having us around.
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So, I don’t use an automatic feeder when I go out of town. Sometimes, I find a friend to stay at my apartment, or I take my cat to stay with someone I trust. But most of the time, I just stick close to home.
I do wonder, though, would it really be so bad? Just for a day or two. Like I said, people do it all the time. But should they? Should I? Would doing so make me a bad cat dad — one who puts his wants before his cat’s needs — or was I being too hard on myself?
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Automatic feeders: good or bad?
“I absolutely love automatic feeders,” says Cristin Tamburo, certified feline behavior consultant at The Cat Counseloropens in new tab. “Cats do well with a routine — it’s very important to them — and in the wild they eat multiple small meals per day, so automatic feeders are great for that.”
“It’s a tool I use quite frequently,” says Marci Koski of Feline Behavior Solutionsopens in new tab. “Food can be a big stressor for some cats, which can lead to all sorts of behavioral issues: from inter-cat aggression to house soiling. Like humans, they can get hangry, which can cause irritability and increased aggression, especially before meals.”
Koski recommends following the “Five a Day Felix” plan developed by Dr. Sarah Ellis and Dr. Lizzie Rowe, which encourages cat parents to feed their feline companions five (or more) small portions of food at regular intervals throughout the day. This approach replicates the size and frequency of the meals they would eat if they were in the wild hunting birds and small rodents.
The Cat Coachopens in new tab’s Marilyn Krieger agrees, pointing out that, “in the wild, cats will hunt 10 to 12 times per day with a 40 to 60 percent success rate, which equals around five meals per day.”
For this reason, Krieger is also a big fan of automatic feeders. “They’re great,” she says. “If you have to go to work [outside the home] you can still feed your cat every four hours.”
The Five a Day Felix plan is about more than just size and frequency of meals, though. Drs. Ellis and Rowe also suggest using puzzle feeders and changing food location regularly to make meal times more mentally stimulating, monitoring your cat’s behavior and weight, and making sure they have plenty of water. Automatic feeders can’t do all that, but they’re still better than just filling your cat’s bowl with food once a day and letting them free feed.
“Eating can become an activity for cats — a way to pass the time — so an automatic feeder is good because it stops them from just eating because they are bored,” says Tamburo, who also suggests hiding treats around the house to give your cats some extra enrichment.
How Long Can You Leave Your Cat With an Automatic Feeder?
While all three of the experts I talked to agree that automatic feeders are wonderful tools, they disagree on exactly how long you should actually leave your cat alone with one.
“10 or 12 hours a day at most,” says Krieger. “And never overnight.”
“A day,” says Koski.
“I’d say it depends on the cat,” says Tamburo. “If it’s an older cat that sleeps all day and is used to you being gone a lot [because you work outside the home], a day or two is probably fine. But no longer.”
Kittens, on the other hand, tend to be more fragile and require more frequent monitoring to keep them safe and out of trouble, so leaving them alone for even one day is a bad idea.
But even though the experts disagreed on how long you could leave your cat with an automatic feeder, their reasoning was more or less the same: taking care of a cat is about more than just feeding them.
Take their litter, for example. Forcing them to use a dirty litter box for days on end is not cool. That would be like someone forcing you to use the same toilet over and over again, but only allowing you to flush it on Mondays. Some cats will tolerate this kind of neglect, but others will act out by going outside the litter box or engaging in other destructive behaviors, especially if they are bored or stressed out from being left alone for too long.
And don’t think you can just use an automatic litter box and everything will be fine. Most cats don’t like them, and even the best ones tend to have smaller tray capacities, which means they require regular refilling to function properly.
There’s also the issue of hydration. What if your cat turns over their water bowl? Even water fountains can clog or run dry or lose power. Cats are notoriously bad drinkers already, and dehydration can have serious health implications, especially in older cats with kidney issues. Dehydration mixed with the stress of being left alone for too long can even lead to issues like crystals in the urine, which can sometimes require surgery to fix (two surgeries in the case of my cat Yoshi).
Like all machines, automatic feeders can also break down. And then what is your cat supposed to do then? Starve until you get home?
And what if you have multiple cats? Food is a resource and resource guarding can turn your cats against each other, especially if one cat is hogging the feeder so the others are unable to get their fair share. Even if you have multiple feeders running at the same time, fights could still break out over who gets access to which feeder when, especially if it’s been a few days and one of the cats is starting to feel a little desperate.
Automatic feeders also do nothing to ensure your cat’s overall safety. What if they get sick or injured or stuck in the closet?
Tech like automatic feeders and litter boxes, electric water fountains, pet cams, and toys that activate when your cat is in the room often reduce anxiety for humans more than they do for cats. They allow us to feel like we’ve “solved” pet parenting and disconnect — even if only temporarily, at least at first — which is often when unfortunate outcomes are most likely to occur.
Even if you could automate all the responsibilities of pet parenthood, why would you want to? It’s engagement with those responsibilities that bonds you to your cat in the first place.
Expert Advice Be Damned!
Of course, if you’re still determined to leave your cat alone for a long weekend — which I’m sure at least some of you reading this article are — at least make sure you are taking additional steps to ensure they are as safe and comfortable as possible.
1. Have someone stop by to check on your cat daily. Pet sitters can be prohibitively expensive these days, but maybe you can have a friend or neighbor stop by once a day just to make sure your cat isn't getting into trouble. And ask them to video call you when they do so you can see for yourself that your cat is okay and they can hear your voice.
2. Add an extra litter box. Or two! And put them in different locations around the house so your cat has options.
3. Add extra water bowls too, while you’re at it. Ideally in different rooms so that if something happens in one room, they still have access to water in another.
4. Test your automatic feeder for a few weeks first. Don’t just set it up before you leave for a long weekend and expect it to work perfectly. There may be a learning curve that you need time to adapt to. And even if it works perfectly right out of the box, your cat may need time before they feel comfortable using it.
5. Don’t make your first trip a long trip. Start small and make sure everything works and your cat isn’t distressed by your absence, then work your way up to longer trips over time.
Me, I’ll probably stick with manual feeding. At least for now. My cat is a toothless 18 year old who only eats wet food and although there are wet food automatic feeders on the market, they seem fussy and hard to clean. That said, I do like the idea of feeding her five small meals per day as opposed to two large ones. But I work from home, so that’s a change I can implement without spending a bunch of money on a bulky automatic feeder.
Then again, it could be nice to have one as a backup. You know, in case I have to be away from the apartment suddenly. Or if the friend who said they would watch my cat changes their mind at the last minute — as happened to me recently — and I am left with the choice of either cancelling my trip, which isn’t always possible, or leaving my cat alone for a day.
Two days, though, I don’t think I could do it. My cat would probably survive, but she wouldn’t be happy. We play together and cuddle and take a nap together every day after lunch. The last time I went out of town, my cat sitter didn’t spend nights at the apartment like they said they would and when I returned home, my poor cat was desperate for attention. I’d hate to do that to her again. The convenience, for me, just isn’t worth it.
