App-controlled feeders for 4 cats

Four cats at different life stages — that's a real feeding puzzle, especially if you've got a kitten who needs frequent small meals, a senior on a prescription diet, and two adults somewhere in the middle. The moment food goes down in a shared bowl, the wrong cat eats the wrong thing. Before I get into solutions, the fundamentals still apply: whatever feeder you use needs to dispense accurate portions, be genuinely easy to clean, and be mechanically solid — cheap feeders jam at the worst moments and grow bacteria in places you can't reach. Can you tell me a bit more about your four? Roughly what ages or life stages, whether any have specific dietary needs, and whether you want app control mainly for scheduling, monitoring, or both?

That's exactly the scenario the SureFeed Microchip Pet Feeder Connect was built for. It reads each cat's microchip or RFID collar tag and physically opens the lid only for that specific animal — so no matter how determined your adults are, they literally cannot access your senior's bowl. The Connect version pairs with the Sure Petcare app, which logs every feeding event with timestamps and portion weights, so when you're travelling you can see precisely when she ate and how much. That peace of mind for a senior on a restricted diet is genuinely useful, not a gimmick. You'd set up four individual units — one per cat — and the kitten's can be programmed with more frequent small openings as she grows. The bowls and lids come apart fully for dishwasher cleaning, which matters a lot with four cats. It runs on batteries with good longevity, or you can use the optional power adapter. It's not the cheapest option at around £150 per unit, but for your senior's situation in particular, the microchip lock is the only reliable solution — timed lids or proximity sensors won't stop a determined cat.

Yes, and this is where the Connect version earns its price over the standard SureFeed. The Sure Petcare app lets you set feeding goal targets for each cat individually, and it will send you a notification if the target hasn't been met by a time you specify. So if your senior normally eats by 8am and she hasn't touched it, you get an alert. The feeding history is displayed as a graph per cat, so you can spot a gradual decline in appetite — which in a 13-year-old is often the first sign something's off — not just a single missed meal. You can also set the lid to stay open for a set window if she's a slow eater, which some seniors are. One practical note: make sure all four cats are chipped, or buy the RFID collar tags Sure Petcare sell separately — the kitten may not be chipped yet.

Each feeder connects through the Sure Petcare Hub, which you buy once and plug into your router — all four feeders then talk to it via a low-power wireless connection rather than connecting directly to Wi-Fi individually. That's actually better for reliability; the hub maintains a stable local connection and the app syncs through that. One hub handles multiple devices, so you're not cluttering your network with four separate connections. The hub is around £30–35 and is sold separately, so factor that into your total. With four feeders plus the hub you're looking at roughly £630–640 all in — significant, but given you're managing a senior cat's medically necessary diet, it's a one-time setup that solves the problem properly.

Good choice for your situation — the microchip lock is the only thing that will reliably keep your senior's food hers. When you're setting up, register each cat in the app before you introduce them to the feeders, then do a short training period where the lid stays open so they associate the unit with food before it starts closing. Most cats adapt within a few days. Keep an eye on the app's feeding logs for the first couple of weeks at home to calibrate the alert thresholds to her normal patterns — that way when you do travel, any real deviation will stand out clearly.