With six cats in my house, figuring out who ate what can sometimes require the investigative skills of a small-town detective. I know food disappeared. I know cats were involved. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.
That’s one of the reasons the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats immediately caught my attention.
At its core, it’s an automatic dry food feeder. You can schedule meals, control portions and keep kibble ready to dispense throughout the day. But that’s really just the beginning. The built-in camera and sensors can identify and track the eating habits of up to five individual cats, including who ate, when they ate and how much they consumed.
For me, that’s far more interesting than simply having a machine feed my cats at 2 PM.
I’ve been testing the Petivity Smart Feeder in my very multi-cat household, where pretty much any new pet gadget immediately becomes a group activity. So far, I’ve found a lot to like about it, particularly for households where keeping tabs on individual cats isn’t exactly easy.
The Petivity Smart Feeder automatically dispenses scheduled meals while tracking when and how much individual cats eat. Its built-in camera can identify up to five cats, making it especially useful for multi-cat households. It also includes Live View, low-food alerts, battery backup and more, with no subscription required.
Petivity Smart Feeder Top Features
Here are the main features worth knowing about:
- Tracks meals for up to five cats
- AI-powered camera identifies individual cats
- Tracks who ate, when they ate and how much they consumed
- Lets you schedule meals through the Petivity app
- Customizable portion sizes
- Live camera view through the app
- 5-liter dry food capacity
- Freshness packet helps keep kibble dry and fresh
- Auto-Jam Correction
- App alerts for feeding issues and low food
- Dishwasher-safe food-contact parts
- Stainless steel food bowl
- Optional battery backup using three D-cell batteries
- No subscription required for eating insights or livestream video
- Works with dry kibble between 5 and 15 mm
Petivity says the feeder can dispense anywhere from 1/8 cup (12 grams) to 3/4 cup (72 grams) per meal. It’s designed specifically for dry food, so you can’t use it with wet, canned or raw cat food.
Pros
Cons
My Experience With the Petivity Smart Feeder
The thing I like most about the Petivity Smart Feeder is that it doesn’t feel like Petivity made an automatic feeder and then tacked on a few features for people with multiple cats.
It feels like they started with, “How do we make this genuinely useful in a multi-cat household?” and worked backward from there. That’s super important to me. I’ve tested plenty of pet products that technically work with multiple pets, but you can tell that wasn’t necessarily the scenario everyone had in mind when designing them. Add more animals and suddenly there are workarounds, reduced accuracy or other little compromises.
Petivity is designed to track meals for up to five cats sharing the same feeding space. The camera identifies which cat is eating while sensors measure food consumption, then the app keeps track of everything for you.
Of course, I have six cats. Because apparently I can’t do anything the easy way. Still, five cats is a very generous limit and should cover the vast majority of multi-cat households. I also discovered that the system’s handling of unfamiliar cats gives me a pretty good workaround for Cat Number Six.
Petivity stands out for its individual cat recognition and meal tracking, but those aren’t the only smart features worth considering. See how it stacks up against our other favorites in our guide to the best automatic cat feeders .
Why I’m more interested in tracking meals than scheduling them
I definitely appreciate being able to schedule meals to dispense automatically. That’s convenient, particularly if you’re away from home during your cats’ normal feeding time. But it’s not my favorite feature.
I want to know who is actually eating. That’s especially important right now because I want to keep a closer eye on Zoe’s eating habits.
A few months ago, cat flu tore through our house. Zoe and Touka had the roughest time with it, and Zoe lost weight. Honestly, she could stand to lose some weight, so the number itself wasn’t necessarily bad. I just didn’t want her losing it because she was sick. Now I worry that she’s not eating enough.
Zoe eats wet food, but she also really loves dry food. With six cats, however, putting down a bowl of kibble doesn’t tell me much about how much Zoe personally ate. I can see that someone ate it. That’s about it.
The Petivity feeder gives me another data point. It’s not their only source of food since we keep other food bowls around the house, so I’m not expecting it to give me a complete nutritional breakdown of Zoe’s day. What it can show me is how often she’s visiting this particular feeder and whether that behavior changes over time.
Petivity specifically designed the system to help owners spot changes in eating patterns that might otherwise be easy to miss. You can also view consumption trends in the app and share that information with your vet if necessary.
That’s much more useful to me than simply knowing that the machine successfully dumped kibble into a bowl at noon.
Apparently, a new feeder is major cat news
Fortunately, getting my cats interested in testing it wasn’t difficult. My cats have learned that when I bring some strange new pet gadget into the house, there’s a reasonably good chance something interesting is about to happen. They surrounded the Petivity feeder pretty much the moment I set it up.
For my initial test run, I didn’t put enough food in the hopper. Everyone gathered around expectantly while the feeder basically said, “Yeah, about that…”
I checked the app and saw that it was telling me the feeder was low on food. So, I filled it. Chaos ensued. I have photographic evidence. Everyone suddenly wanted to investigate the magical new food machine at once.
Zoe won the round of “who gets to try it first?” Once she got her head in there, she wasn’t particularly interested in allowing anyone else near it. There was growling and a little bit of smacking involved. At least that answered one question immediately: Zoe likes the feeder.
Leia managed to get her turn after everyone else had moved on to other things.
Interestingly, the camera didn’t identify Zoe during that first feeding frenzy. I’m not particularly concerned about that because the system was still in its training period, and Zoe was surrounded by other cats all trying to investigate the feeder simultaneously. There was a lot going on in front of that camera.
Leia approached later when things were considerably calmer and was easier for it to capture.
The Live View is surprisingly handy
Even though the feeder didn’t automatically capture Zoe during that first chaotic session, I could still see her through the app’s Live View.
Tap the Live button and you can see what’s happening at the feeder in real time.
I can see that being especially useful when you’re away from home. If you’ve scheduled a meal and want to check whether your cat actually wandered over to eat it, you can take a quick look.
And no, the camera isn’t giving you gorgeous HD footage of your cat eating dinner. I actually like that.
The camera quality is somehow both a pro and a con
This isn’t supposed to be a cat babysitting camera. The camera has a job: identify which cat is eating so the feeder can track that cat’s meals. That’s it.
Because the images aren’t giant, crystal-clear shots of the entire room, the Petivity Smart Feeder feels considerably less intrusive than some connected cameras I’ve used.
I’m not exactly a private person. I’ve been a blogger and freelance writer for years. I’ve shared half my life online, and I’m also perfectly capable of telling my entire life story to someone who asked me what time it is.
My house itself is a little different. I’ll happily tell you my living room is messy. I don’t necessarily need every device photo to document the evidence.
I don’t need the entire internet seeing that behind the cat eating dinner is Freya sprawled across the sofa on the ratty old Scooby-Doo blanket she loves, an empty Diet Coke box sitting in the middle of the room because the kittens dragged it out to play with and probably one of my socks next to it because stealing laundry is apparently their latest hobby. (At least it’s not my underwear.)
Even when I use Live View, the background is barely distinguishable. For someone who wants AI-powered identification and meal monitoring without installing what amounts to another security camera inside the house, I think that’s a nice compromise.
There is a tradeoff, though.
Take some time choosing your cats’ training photos
The lower-detail, black-and-white images can make identification tricky when you have several cats who look alike. Zoe is easy. She’s solid gray. Touka is easy because she’s basically a walking fluff ball. Luke has very distinctive markings that still stand out well in black and white.
Then we get to Leia, Lily and Nori. They’re different colors in real life, but remove the color and suddenly they look much more alike.
During setup and training, Petivity gives you multiple images of each cat and asks you to select the best one. Don’t automatically choose the prettiest headshot.
Look for the picture that shows whatever makes that cat visually different from the others.
For Nori, I chose an image where you can clearly see what looks like a white streak on his head. It isn’t technically a white streak when you see him in color, but in the feeder’s black-and-white image, it’s distinctive.
Basically, think less “Which picture would Nori use on his dating profile?” and more “Which picture would I use to identify Nori in a feline police lineup?”
What happens with my sixth cat?
Petivity supports profiles for up to five cats. Since I have six, someone has to be the odd cat out. For now, that’s probably going to be Touka.
She doesn’t eat much dry food anyway, so tracking her kibble habits isn’t as big a deal to me as tracking the others.
The nice thing is that the feeder doesn’t simply pretend a sixth cat doesn’t exist. If it detects a face it doesn’t recognize, it can show me the image so I can determine who visited.
That means if Touka is secretly eating far more dry food than I think she is, I’ll still have some evidence.
A few practical things worth knowing
The stainless steel bowl, food container and kibble carousel are removable and dishwasher-safe. The feeder has a 5-liter hopper and includes a freshness packet inside the lid to help keep kibble dry and fresh. The included packet lasts approximately two to four weeks and can be replaced. Make sure you check the box carefully because there are extra freshness packets in there and I almost threw them out.
It also has Auto-Jam Correction. If the feeder does jam, the Petivity app can alert you and walk you through fixing it. It’s really as easy as just pushing a button on the app. You can even use the app to remotely prime the feeder, which moves the kibble around and may clear the problem without you being home.
Another feature I really appreciate is the battery backup. We lose power around here if a squirrel happens to glance at an electrical pole the wrong way, so backup power is always a major plus in my house. The Petivity Smart Feeder uses three D-cell alkaline batteries for backup power. They’re not included, so you’ll need to pick those up separately.
The included USB-C power cord is reasonably long, although I wouldn’t complain if Petivity gave us a little more length. That’s especially true if you’re plugging it into a countertop outlet and running the cord down to a feeder sitting on the floor.
Is the Petivity Smart Feeder worth the price?
The Petivity Smart Feeder normally sells for $149.99, and I don’t consider the price a drawback. Is it more expensive than putting kibble in a regular food bowl? Well…yes. Of course it is. But comparing the two doesn’t make much sense. It’s like comparing a tricycle to a car because they both have wheels.
You’re not paying $150 for a bowl. You’re getting an automatic feeder with scheduled meals, portion control, individual meal tracking for up to five cats, AI-powered cat identification, food consumption data, Live View, jam detection and battery backup.
More importantly, there’s no subscription fee to continue using the eating insights or livestream features. For what it does, I think the price is fair and competitive.
Final Verdict
The Petivity Smart Feeder isn’t going to replace every food bowl in my house, especially since my cats also eat wet food. That’s not really what I need it to do.
What I wanted was a better way to see what’s happening when six cats share food throughout the day.
Who’s eating? Who isn’t? Is Zoe visiting the dry food more or less often than usual? Is Touka secretly eating more kibble than I thought? Is Freya committing crimes against the cat food supply?
Those are things a regular automatic feeder can’t tell me.
The five-cat limit is technically a drawback in my house, and households with several very similar-looking cats may need to put a little extra effort into the training process. Neither issue outweighs what I like about it.
More than anything, I appreciate that the Petivity Smart Feeder feels like it was actually designed with multi-cat households in mind rather than adapted for them afterward.
And considering Zoe planted herself in front of it during our very first test and basically told the other cats to get their own feeder, I think she approves, too.
The Petivity Smart Feeder automatically dispenses scheduled meals while tracking when and how much individual cats eat. Its built-in camera can identify up to five cats, making it especially useful for multi-cat households. It also includes Live View, low-food alerts, battery backup and more, with no subscription required.
Leave a Comment