Microchip feeders for senior & young adult cats

Microchip feeders are one of the most genuinely useful innovations for multi-cat homes — they make sure each cat only ever accesses their own food, which matters enormously when you've got a senior on a prescription or specialist joint-support diet living alongside younger cats who'd happily hoover it up. Before I point you to the right setup: how many cats do you have, are they all microchipped, and is the main concern keeping the senior's joint-support food away from the younger ones, or is the senior also at risk of eating their food?

That's a really common and genuinely frustrating dynamic — the older cat needs that food most, and he's the one getting crowded out. The straightforward fix is the SureFlap SureFeed Microchip Pet Feeder. It reads your cat's existing microchip and the lid only opens for him — the young ones trigger nothing. It's quiet enough not to stress a senior cat, the bowl is the right size for a single portion, and it runs on batteries so you can place it wherever he feels safest, away from the others.

Yes, it works with all standard ISO microchips including the 9, 10, and 15-digit chips used across the UK — so an older chip is absolutely fine. You just hold the feeder in learning mode, let your senior cat approach, and it stores his chip number. Takes about thirty seconds. You can also programme it to a microchip manually if needed, but most people find the auto-learn method easiest.

If the younger two are on the same food and eat at a similar pace without guarding or competition between them, a shared bowl is fine — you don't need microchip feeders for them unless one starts bullying the other. For now I'd start with a single SureFeed for your senior and see how the household dynamic shifts. Often once the older cat has a secure, protected space to eat, mealtimes calm down considerably for everyone.

One practical tip: place it in a spot your senior already gravitates to — a quieter corner, slightly away from where the younger two tend to hang out. Some older cats take a day or two to trust a new feeder, so if he's hesitant at first, try leaving the lid open manually for the first meal so he gets used to eating from it before it starts closing. After that, most cats adapt within 24 to 48 hours. The SureFeed Connect version also exists if you ever want to track how much he's eating via an app, which can be genuinely useful for monitoring a senior cat's appetite over time.