Best automatic feeder for touring musicians

A touring schedule is one of the trickiest situations for cat feeding — you need something that can run reliably for several days, not just overnight. The most important things to look for are portion accuracy (so your cat isn't overfed on day one and starving by day three), ease of cleaning (hygiene matters a lot over multi-day periods), and mechanical reliability (cheap feeders jam, and there's no one home to fix it). Can I ask: is this just for the one British Shorthair, roughly how many days at a stretch are you typically away, and is your main concern portion control or just making sure she always has access to food?

That's exactly the right instinct — British Shorthairs are famously prone to weight gain and Margot being six means she's entering the age where that really starts to matter. For a week-long trip with a portion-control-focused cat, I'd steer you toward the PETLIBRO Automatic Cat Feeder with a large-capacity hopper. It holds up to 6 litres, which comfortably covers a week of portioned meals, and its dispensing wheel mechanism is significantly more reliable than the auger-style motors used in cheaper feeders. You can programme up to six meals a day with precise portion sizes, and it has a twist-lock food compartment that keeps kibble fresh. Can I ask what size portions she's currently on, and are you feeding her exclusively dry food?

Good — dry food only makes this much simpler and the PETLIBRO handles that perfectly. At 50g a day you'd have enough capacity for well over a week without refilling. I'd suggest programming three meals — morning, midday, and evening — which mirrors a natural rhythm and stops her fixating on one big feed. The one thing I'd flag: even with a reliable feeder, a week is a long stretch for a single cat. Make sure someone can do a welfare check around day four if you're away the full seven days — not because the feeder will fail, but just because cats can have unrelated health issues and she shouldn't go several days unnoticed.

The PETLIBRO is one of the better ones for cleaning — the food bowl and the dispensing rotor both detach and are dishwasher safe, which matters because with any feeder used over several days, you'll get grease and dust build-up in the hopper. I'd recommend giving it a full clean between each trip rather than once a month. It takes about ten minutes once you're used to it. The lid seals reasonably well to keep kibble fresh, which is another reason it suits longer absences. It's available on Amazon UK and is consistently well-reviewed for reliability over time, which is the thing that matters most for your situation.