Customer Reviews

Lentek 6-Day Automatic Pet Dish

5 star:		(86)
4 star:		(84)
3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(61)

 

 

I've had this automatic feeder for 2 years. It works great and has eliminated the screaming my cat used to do before meals. Now she just sits in front of the feeder and waits for it to go off. It holds 6 meals (but one is exposed so it really only has 5 meals). The cover rotates to expose a new meal every 6, 12, or 24 hours. My cat has been very abusive to the machine (because she can smell the food in it) however she has not been able to break the cover or get to any of the other food compartments. If you do force the machine to go backwards the motor will kick on and rotate the cover back to the correct position. My only real problem with the feeder is that the motor is quite loud and drains the battery very quickly. Also as a note, there is no way to set the hour on the feeder, it just goes off 6,12, or 24 hours after you turned it on. So if you want it to always go off at 7am you would need to turn the power on at 7am/pm the first time.

This product has such severe design flaws that I am surprised Amazon is willing to sell it.

I have two housecats and they figured out how to break into this feeder within six hours. It consists of basically three parts: an outer gray tray which is broken into six small dishes; a rotating lid; and a central core that takes a 9V battery and rotates every 6, 12 or 24 hours. The trouble is, the central piece only loosely snaps into the base. You can work it lose with one finger (or paw) prying at the perimeter of the dish. Like I said, one of my cats figured this out very quickly.

In addition the build quality is poor, the lid does not line up very well with the feed trays so a determined cat can work her nose into the next dish, and the nine volt battery lead was so short it took a long time to get the thing plugged in.

My cats are not particularly big or strong. The packaging has a photo of a dog eating out of this tray; I find it hard to believe the manufacturer ever tested it with a dog, if cats can break it I can imagine a dog would make short work of it.

Shipping and handling cost over 25% of the price, and now that it's been broken by my cats there's not much point in waiting on hold to return it (the vendor does not have an email form to get an RMA number).

Buyer beware. Thought I'd post a review so that other people don't make the mistake I did.

It works fine and has ice packs that can be frozen and placed in the bottom. It has 6 compartments, but one is always exposed so the first one is wasted right when you put the food out. My cat likes to eat twice a day so it's only good for about 2 1/2 days. The ice packs don't chill the food very long so I've noticed that the last compartment or two the food is untouched because the wet food was spoiled.

I bought this automatic feeder because my cat requires medicine every 12hrs, which makes vacations and special events difficult. I decided to test my cat's strength and resolve andplaced wet food (without meds) in the feeder. My cat tore the lid off in under 5 minutes!!! As it is, its totally useless, it is held together by plastic snap notches!

HOWEVER, when I took it apart I figured out a way to MAKE IT totally cat proof-I removed from the bottom piece the screws that hold the plastic notches in place. This leaves 4 holes that correspond to 4 holes at the bottom of the motor (where it used to snap into place. If you run screws/washers through these holes, and use bolts on the bottom---NO CAT WILL BE ABLE TO OPEN IT!!!! Well, unless he is able to rip thick plastic apart itself. But my cat hasn't been able to do that yet. After about 10 minutes of pawing biting, and growling at the feeder he gets bored and just waits for the feeding time!

Good luck!!!

I've owned this for at least three years now. I've found I need to change the batteries about every four months but I keep it set to feed every 12 hours so this is acceptable to me. My cat's biggest complaint is that her owner sometimes neglects to fill it often enough but she has discovered that biting her stupid sleeping human will prompt the lazy human into action. LOL
That aside this device has enabled me to get my overweight cat down to a healthy weight. I use only dry food so I didn't fill the included water bottles at first but I've found that filling them helps add weight to the unit that keeps it more stable on the floor. (I was very pleased to find they don't leak too!)
This device has gone through some abuse, drops of 6 feet, sustained sub zero temps and triple digit temps as well. It has a few scratches and some gouges but it is still perfectly usable. The unit does run slowly when the batteries are getting low. I use this as a warning to have fresh batteries ready. Battery hatch is screwed in with a small Phillips head screw that I've learned to keep a special small head Phillips screw driver with the cat food to ensure that I can get he thing open. Getting the battery to make good contact is sometimes a challenge but so far I've always succeeded. I've considered getting a second unit and setting both to open at 24 hr intervals... 12 hours apart from each other. Then I really could go 6 days without having to fill it but then as my cat has convinced me I'm a bit lazy!

My cats were driving me near the brink of insanity with their whining for food at 5am. As a last ditch effort, i decided to buy this automatic feeder, even though i assumed my cat would figure out a way to sabotage it. This machine is a godsend. My cats can't get into it, and they don't whine for their food nearly as much. Instead, they sit patiently in front of the feeder from 5am until it goes off at 6:15. it's just so wonderful! If i could change it in any way, it would be to add a clock to it to set precisely when the machine goes off. It's a little inconvenient how you have to be at the feeder when you want to change the time. Meaning if you want to change the time from 7am to 5am, you have to be at the machine either at 5am or 5pm, since it works on a 12 or 24 hour interval. If your cats are whiners, save yourself some suffering and buy this now!

i feed my cat a small amount of dry food twice a day. this is the only automatic feeder that allows you to control the portion (at least at small amounts) and has reasonable capacity (6 holes). this was the second one of these that i've purchased (and amazon's price ($40-50 or so) is significantly less than the first one i bought ($60-70), and i got the first one at the cheapest price available--at the time it wasn't offered by amazon). anyway, i bought the second one so that we could leave the cat home alone for longer that 3 max days at a time. the second feeder allows us to go out of town a few days longer with the peace of mind that he'll continue being fed properly and on time.

it's easy to use, easy to clean, and of relatively solid construction. my cat's tried to figure out ways to trick it to open, and so far it hasn't happened (unless it's low on batteries--see below).

although this is the best auto feeder on the market at the moment, there are some things that would improve it greatly. we've been using the original feeder for a couple years now, but the motor/middle section doesn't seem to be a reliable mechanism and i wouldn't be surprised if it up and died one day. at the same time, it has been going almost every day for the past 2 years and has been pretty reliable.

we had to remove the button for advancing the feeder a couple months in, since it got stuck and the top was turning continuously. now we just have to use a pen or stick a finger into the hole to press the button. not a big deal, but a little ghetto.

it drains batteries a little quicker than i'd prefer, but it's not terrible. when the battery is running low, it malfunctions in different ways. sometimes it'll only turn halfway. other times it'll turn partially and then reverse itself--in these instances my poor cat couldn't access his meal. other times, it'll turn when it's not supposed to--in these instances my cat got more food than he was supposed to and was quite happy about that.

also, the clear plastic flap covering the middle controls has broken off--part of my cat's attempts to trick the system. again, just a superficial thing since it hasn't affected the functioning so far.

a digital control with more options with a low-battery indicator would improve this feeder greatly. the ultimate feeder would be like the petmate le bistro feeder but could dispense small amounts and not allow pets to figure out how to pull out food by themselves. my cat would figure that one out so quick and probably get so fat. so this feeder is still MUCH better than anything out there at the moment. i would still recommend it.

I have been using this feeder for the past 6 months and it works very well. I have a 23 year old cat who likes to be fed small amounts, several times a day. The 6 hr. cycle is perfect. The first battery drained fairly soon, but I've had others last 2 months with daily use. I've been trying to find spare ice packs (so that I can reload and go without waiting to refreeze the packs). Lentek didn't respond to my e-mails so I just ordered a 2nd feeder. I've had no problem with the cat trying to force the lid even when her favorite flavor is in the next section. For a 30 hr. feeding cycle, I freeze the last 2 meals so that they thaw just in time. She's a very happy cat.

I see many reviewers claiming that their cat has broken into this feeder quickly and easily. Admittedly, my cat broke in within 5 minutes of being shown the new dish. She's smart and strong but I couldn't believe that the unit was so poorly built. Further investigation revealed that the timer wasn't snapped firmly down onto the tabs in the base. It takes a little wiggling to get the slots on the timer lined up with the tabs in the base. Once aligned you have to push down pretty hard to make the tabs snap into place. Now my cat, strong as she is, can't spin the cover to get to the next meal!

I thought this was a great idea until I saw my cat pushing the cover around in the opposite direction...